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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26568259">Maatsuyker (southern lights shining bright)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stelia22/pseuds/Stelia22'>Stelia22</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(sort of), Alternate Universe - Firewatch, Alternate Universe - Island caretakers, Alternate Universe - Lighthouse, Firewatch au, Huddling For Warmth, M/M, Sharing Body Heat, Slow Build, cold weather tropes</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 10:34:38</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>30,314</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26568259</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stelia22/pseuds/Stelia22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack has long desired escape from the stresses of modern life. That's why he takes a six month post as one of two lighthouse keepers and island caretakers on Maatsuyker Island, a remote island off the south coast of Tasmania. Normally the two caretakers have a pre-established relationship as proof that they can survive and work together in isolated conditions, but Jack doesn’t know his fellow caretaker, Gavin.</p><p>Isolated from civilization, their job is to maintain the island, take weather observations and maintain the lighthouse. To do so, they’ll need to work together, but under the pouring rain, feelings spark amongst six months alone with nature and each other.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Gavin Free/Jack Pattillo</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>33</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">


        <li>
            Inspired by

            <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23925853">Under the Weather</a> by <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stelia22/pseuds/Stelia22">Stelia22</a>.
        </li>

    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This fic is heavily inspired by blogs and Instagram posts by past Maatsuyker Island caretakers. This fic is also (very) loosely inspired by the video game Firewatch, but you do not need to have played Firewatch to understand the fic. The only similarities between them are that they both consist of two people living, more or less, in isolated conditions, and the accelerated relationship development that results from such proximity.</p><p>This fic is unbetaed, but it is complete (29k words, 7 chapters). Looking for any and all feedback, especially about descriptions of scenery. Since there’s so many chapters, let me know how often I should post (either once or twice a week).</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>From the window of the helicopter, dense scrubby vegetation on a rugged island comes into view. It’s almost dawn, but it’s the first time in two weeks that the rain has eased enough for flying, so they’d been hurried into the chopper before their post got delayed further.</p><p>Near the southern tip of the island, along the rocky steep coastline, is the lighthouse. The tiny white beacon that, along with the weather station, several other white-roofed buildings and the surrounding shrubland, will be home for the next six months.</p><p>As they head towards the helipad nearby, Jack finally looks over at his fellow lighthouse keeper and island caretaker. He looks the same as he did over Skype and Facebook, a lanky young guy with messy hair, tan skin, and a large nose. They hadn’t talked much beyond making sure they didn’t go over their respective weight limits for what they’d each be taking to the island, which are in plastic fish bins hanging from the bottom of the chopper.</p><p>Jack’s chest tightens as he wonders, yet again, what the hell they’re doing.</p><p>(What <em>he’s </em>doing.)</p><p>He takes deep breaths, reminding himself that the helicopter pilot is a professional, has ferried dozens of other caretakers back and forth before, including the ones from the most recent post just minutes before. He wants to talk with his fellow caretaker – Gavin – but the helicopter blades are too loud, and once he opens his mouth to speak Jack suddenly doesn’t know what to say anyway.</p><p>They land.</p><p>The pilot helps them unhook their bins and move them into the biggest of the white-roofed buildings – quarters one, the brick house they’ll be living in – but after that he leaves.</p><p>Now, they’re here. Alone on this magnificent, sprawling island.</p>
<hr/><p>They’re just in time for the first weather observation of the day for the Bureau of Meteorology, so that’s what they do first. It’s awkward and silent but for the wind whipping around them, huddled up in Parks-issued wet weather jackets and pants against the light drizzle as, led by their head torches and the lighthouse, they head up to the weather station.</p><p>Jack shuts the door behind them. He unwraps his notebook and pen from his jacket, sighing in relief when they’re dry. He clenches them tight to his chest like a shield, waiting for Gavin to do something so that he can fall into step behind him.</p><p>He doesn’t.</p><p>What happens is that he hovers, stock-still, in a corner by the door, staring at the entire room like it’s going to swallow him whole.</p><p>Jack’s heart races at the too-loud silence. “Um – ” he blurts out before he can stop himself.</p><p>Gavin looks over at him, straightening up in that expectant way people do when they’re expecting guidance or instruction.</p><p>A lump rises in Jack’s throat.</p><p>“What do you…what part do you want to do?” Jack finally stammers.</p><p>There, that wasn’t too bad (he hopes).</p><p>Gavin blinks at him, his face completely blank. He shrugs. “I dunno, whatever you feel like.”</p><p>That’s not helpful, and not just because that’s what Jack was going to say to him instead. He doesn’t want to risk stepping on toes here, and he won’t be the cause of an argument two minutes into their six month stay.</p><p>“Are you sure?” Jack asks finally, because Gavin hasn’t said anything in a minute, and someone needs to say something, lest they miss the ten minute window for their weather observation.</p><p>Gavin nods. “Yeah. I can do any part of it, if it helps.”</p><p>It does and it doesn’t. Does, because that means he’d completed the compulsory training back in Hobart, which they’d scheduled to do separately since Gavin couldn’t fly in until later. Doesn’t, because he hadn’t expressed a particular preference or system for the order in which he did things, which probably differed to Jack’s own.</p><p>But he’s put the ball in Jack’s court, so Jack swallows around the lump in his throat and says, “How about…maybe I could…determine visibility in miles?”</p><p>Gavin nods, something relieved coming over his face. “Sure. Guess I should log onto the laptop, right?” he says, tilting his chin towards the ancient laptop across the room. “Since we have to send the results off to the Bureau.”</p><p>“Yeah, sounds good,” Jack sighs in relief.</p><p>With that, the tension eases a bit as they go off to do their agreed duties.</p><p>Jack picks up the standard-issue binoculars on the desk and looks out the window into the ocean. He’s met with monstrous waves crashing thunderously against the thousand-foot cliff drop just outside the weather station. They rattle the thin walls of the station and suddenly he wonders whether they’ll be bowled over in the swell.</p><p>He forces himself to put that aside, to take deep breaths, but a pit of dread has formed in his stomach as he tries to determine visibility. In the pitch black of thick clouds, he can’t spot the jagged peak of the Southwest cape peninsula, one of the landmarks they’d be using as a benchmark for distances. There’s a diagram on the wall reminding him of other benchmarks, such as the collection of sheer rocks called, ‘The Needles’, but he can’t find any of those either.</p><p>He swallows down his worry to watch for sea swell height instead. There are two shorter rocks nearby, embedded with jagged edges like a height metre for the swell. Their exact heights are specified by the swell height chart on the walls of the station. Based on this, Jack records the swell height and direction; it’s a five metre – he’s not sure what that is in feet – south-westerly swell right now.</p><p>He spends another minute trying to determine visibility, but after writing down the type, height and direction of the clouds, nothing else has become clearer in the inky black skies, so he reluctantly pulls back. Maybe Gavin would be able to spot something?</p><p>He calls him over, stammers out that he’s not completely sure of the landmarks that are visible, but Gavin doesn’t seem to notice, taking his turn with the binoculars without comment.</p><p>Almost instantly, he says that he can just see the outline of the closest of the Needle rocks. Jack feels awful for not being able to spot them himself through the thick clouds, but Gavin’s already pulled back from the binoculars, moving over to the laptop and pointing out the wind speed and direction, which Jack hastens to write down manually. Gavin copies the observations in Jack’s notebook onto the computer and submits everything just after 06:00.</p><p>They hover, afterwards. Silence thick, now.</p><p>“Do you want to go to the lighthouse?” Jack rattles off, finally, unable to stand the silence any longer.</p><p>Gavin nods. “Sure.”</p>
<hr/><p>The stifling silence during the long walk down the grassed track to the lighthouse is matched only by the cold, sticky air and the slowly easing rain, which stops by the time they reach the lighthouse.</p><p>They trudge up the long spiralling metal stairs, past several landings and the tiny windows, and out onto the balcony. The view from which, Jack decides, is immediately worth the months of struggle preparing for this trip.</p><p>Rolling waves in the expansive ocean that seems to go on forever, a narrow circle of light in one spot from where the lighthouse beams into the ocean. The Needle rocks are coming in clearer now, the clouds having already started to shift in the distance. They’ve moved to obscure the first hints of light from the sun instead, which is barely peeking through where the sky and sea meet.</p><p>He leans his hands against the metal railing, inhaling deeply. Everything smells fresh and cold, salty and clean. The air is thicker here, like he can taste the clouds above. The metal balcony clatters as he walks around it, the light humming gently inside.</p><p>They’ll still have to turn on the light each night, using the old clockwork mechanisms, but it has an automatic daylight sensor that will switch it off upon sunrise. The light consists of the electric lamp itself and the Fresnel lens in front of it, the giant lens that concentrates the light into a relatively narrow beam. The lens is made up of a series of concentric rings that will need to be gently cleaned with a rag every day. They won’t need to touch the daylight sensors; those require more specialised hands and are monitored remotely by Parks.</p><p>Nonetheless, the lighthouse won’t be their main responsibility, despite the job description and it being the main attraction of the island. It was built in the late 1800s, along with the three houses and the weather station, but like all lighthouses these days it’s mostly automated. The lighthouse used to guide boats away from the rocky shores of the island, but now GPS and radios exist, and boat transportation has been replaced with helicopters. The island is still important for heritage and weather reading reasons, hence the requirement of keepers.</p><p>Other than cleaning the lenses and turning on the light, all they’ll have to do is open the main door of the lighthouse to air out the interior from the rain and repaint the exterior on sunny days.</p><p>Jack ponders whether it’s actually a good idea to air it out now – it might, no, it <em>will </em>rain again – but Gavin’s already opened the door, so Jack reluctantly lets it be.</p><p>Afterwards, they go back to the house. Once they’re inside and Jack has shut the door, it’s just the two of them, standing across from each other in the living room. Gavin’s scuffing his foot against the floorboards, boot squeaking as it catches on them.</p><p>What now?</p><p>Jack had expected Gavin to have started conversation by now; he looked like the confident, outgoing type. But he’s been silent other than for their duties. His hands are now stuffed in the pockets of his jacket, eyes fixed on the ground, and Jack realises, somewhat belatedly, that it’s up to him to reach out first, to figure out what to say.</p><p>How could he start a conversation? <em>Hi, I’m Jack,</em> had already been done, while disinfecting their boots right before they’d gotten into the chopper together. <em>How are you? </em>is his default, but he doesn’t want to exhaust that conversation starter before they’ve begun. Maybe task designations? But he doesn’t want to seem bossy.</p><p>This is why he escaped out here in the first place: because he is completely incapable of social interaction.</p><p>“What do you want to do first?” he asks, finally. That’s neutral enough, right?</p><p>A shrug. “Unpack?”</p><p>Jack stares at him incredulously. Three weeks of cramming their brains – albeit separately – with how to maintain generators and mowers, how to navigate the water and electrical systems, how to maintain the multitude of gardens, and the first thing is <em>unpack</em>?</p><p>“If you want to do something else, I’m open to suggestions,” Gavin says tentatively.</p><p>It’s like cold water being thrown over him.</p><p>“Sorry, no, it’s fine,” Jack sags. “It’s just that I wasn’t expecting that.”</p><p>“What were you expecting?” Gavin asks with an air of curiosity, eyebrows furrowed.</p><p>He doesn’t even sound offended.</p><p>“De-moulding and cleaning all the buildings, mowing the grass, clearing the drains, checking up on the power systems, then working on the gardens,” Jack lists off. He’s got a notebook listing all of their duties, and that’s only a few of them.</p><p>Gavin nods. “That sounds good, but I’m not sure if we can do all of that in one day. I figured that we could unpack today, since we’ll probably be so busy every other day that we won’t get around to it otherwise.”</p><p>It’s a good point.</p><p>Jack nods. “Okay. But we should de-mould and clean the house first, then unpack. After that, we can mow the grass – ” he says, even as his brain is yelling at him to <em>mow first, it’ll probably rain again later</em>. “Actually, can we mow the grass first, then de-mould and clean the house, then unpack?”</p><p>Gavin nods, undeterred by Jack’s take-back. “Sounds good. Probably a good idea to mow it now before it rains for the next however long.”</p><p>He says it casually, like the fact that it rains here two-hundred and fifty days a year isn’t that note-worthy. Given his English accent, it probably isn’t.</p><p>Jack’s about to go look for the lawnmowers when his tummy rumbles. His face heats.</p><p>Gavin, to his credit, appears completely unfazed. “Want to have breakfast? We have those yoghurt sachets, right?”</p><p>Jack hesitates. They’d known beforehand that the island had an EasiYo yoghurt maker, so they’d decided that during their stay, breakfast would be yoghurt with cinnamon toast crunch.</p><p>The grass, though…</p><p>“Are you hungry?” Jack asks him.</p><p>Gavin shrugs. “I don’t mind either way. It’s up to you.”</p><p>Jack internally sags with relief, then immediately feels guilty for it. Because what if Gavin had actually been hungry?</p><p>(What if he is, but is just playing nice with Jack?)</p><p>But he puts that aside, otherwise he won’t be able to say anything at all. “How about we mow first, then we have breakfast?”</p>
<hr/><p>The grass is expansive and grows fast enough that it needs to be mowed every two weeks. There’s grass around their house, the half a mile up to then around the heritage houses – quarters two and three – then around the vegetable garden, the workshop, the generator shed, and the track leading to the lighthouse. The grass continues around the secret garden, the weather station, the helipad, the communications towers, the tea tree and myrtle track, the pig face plant track, and the mile-long grassed road that goes from the southern to northern ends of the island.</p><p>Ten miles in total, if Jack remembers correctly. Nothing they can do but get to it.</p><p>The wet grass bites at their waists. It’s tall enough that they have to use brush cutters on it first, and Jack marvels at how Gavin’s able to handle them reasonably well despite how lanky-limbed he is. Afterwards, they get out the lawn mowers. In a bid to prevent potential collisions, Jack proposes that they start at opposite ends of wherever they’re mowing before meeting in the middle, which Gavin readily agrees to.</p><p>In the cold, heavy air, sweat sticks to Jack’s face in thick layers as he works. The sun slowly rises to match their workload, and he quickly gets lost in the smell of freshly cut grass, how it tickles his ankles, in the motions of running the mower over tall damp grass, lane by lane.</p><p>They’re just starting up around quarters two when Jack looks at his watch and curses. It’s 07:20, ten minutes before they need to tune into the scheduled broadcast, or sked, of the Tasmanian Maritime Radio at 07:30 for additional coastal forecasts and observations. He stops his mower, making his way over to Gavin and waving his arms at the same time until he finally notices.</p><p>Once Gavin turns off his mower, Jack leads them back to the house and into the living room, where they turn on the radio.</p><p>They’re just in time. Jack writes down the weather observations for their coastline to send to the bureau later and Gavin checks in with the operators. They’ll re-confirm their safe arrival on the island with Parks Tasmania later, but the operators at the radio station are a nice safety mechanism as well, a point of contact in case there’s an emergency.</p><p>After the radio sked, Jack suggests they go back to mowing. Gavin hesitates, then reminds him about breakfast.</p><p>Breakfast, right.</p><p>Fears of it raining again before they can finish mowing rush through Jack’s head, but in the end, hunger wins out. Jack grabs a cloth to wipe down the wet plastic bins, but Gavin’s already thrown open to the door to shake the water off of them outside. Which is fine, just unexpected, Jack tells himself even as unease rises in his chest at the excess water that’s probably being left behind.</p><p>He swoops in to wipe them down properly the moment Gavin’s grabbed their breakfast and turned away from him to head into the kitchen. Jack feels vaguely guilty for being sneaky about it, but he doesn’t think the excess water could possibly evaporate in the humid air.</p><p>Gavin’s found bowls and spoons for their cereal. They would have had EasiYo yoghurt with it, but they’d both forgotten that they had to leave it in the yoghurt maker for eight to twelve hours, then refrigerate it, so plain cereal it is.</p><p>Gavin doesn’t seem bothered by the mistake; if anything, he’s amused by it, like the mistake is part of the fun.</p><p>(Maybe it is, a small part of Jack’s brain says, but Jack quickly ignores it.)</p><p>During breakfast, they check in with Parks using the radio as confirmation of their safe arrival. Afterwards, Jack goes to put his bowl in the sink, then stops himself. He’s not sure what Gavin’s policy on this is, had been too scared to ask him over the internet, but now the problem has come back to the fore-front.</p><p>“Do you put dishes in the sink or on the counter?”</p><p>Gavin shrugs. “I don’t mind either way. Just gotta keep it clean, you know?”</p><p>“What do you usually do, though?” Jack asks.</p><p>“Um…” Gavin trails off, eyes wide. “I use the dishwasher.”</p><p>Oh. Jack really should have thought of that.</p><p>“That makes sense,” he says, finally. He looks around the 1800s style kitchen, “But there’s no dishwasher here, so…”</p><p>Gavin coughs, something awkward to it. “I usually put them on the counter,” he says in a rush. “But what about you?”</p><p>“I usually put dishes in the sink,” Jack says. “But we can put them on the counter, that’s fine.”</p><p>“O – okay,” Gavin says. He shifts glances all around the room, but he puts his bowl on the counter anyway.</p><p>Jack adds his bowl to the counter, and it’s admittedly odd to see the counter a bit cluttered, but he’ll get used to it.</p><p>It’s almost 09:00, so they head back to the weather station for their second and final weather reading. On the way, they stop by the Stevenson screen, a meteorological instrument shelter that looks like a mailbox, to take additional readings.</p><p>The Stevenson screen is a standardised environment within which to measure temperature, humidity and atmospheric pressure. Accordingly, it shelters thermometers, a hygrometer and a barometer, respectively, from the frequent rain and wind here. They reset the minimum temperature gauges, then take the additional readings of dry bulb, wet bulb, minimum and maximum temperatures, as well as humidity and atmospheric pressure.</p><p>Then they go up to the weather station to take the same readings as before. They submit their weather reports for the day, and the rest of the day is theirs.</p><p>The weather is still holding up, so they decide to go back to mowing. They finish up the areas around quarters two and three, the vegetable garden, the workshop and the generator shed, but halfway through the track leading to the lighthouse, it starts pouring with rain.</p><p>They shouldn’t have broken for breakfast.</p><p>At least, that’s what Jack thinks, as he hurries to juggle his brush cutter and lawnmower into his hands and rushes to close the lighthouse door. Thankfully, not too much rain got in, so he heaves his gear up into his arms and sprints back to the workshop by the house.</p><p>They hadn’t even made it to the second garden.</p><p>But Gavin doesn’t seem to be bothered by all the mowing left to do. He arrives at the workshop at walking speed, languidly dragging his lawnmower behind him<em>, </em>as though it’s not getting soaked by the rain, as though they don’t have to keep their equipment in shape for the next six months.</p><p><em>Okay, this is fine,</em> Jack thinks to himself, trying to go over the repair procedures for rained-on lawnmowers. <em>We just need to get –</em></p><p>“Starter fluid, right?” Gavin says, plucking an aerosol can labelled <em>premium-strength starter fluid </em>from a shelf. “Where do we spray it, again?”</p><p>He says it lightly, like he’s not bothered at not having fully memorised everything from the training back in Hobart, like there’s no repair shop to pop down to if they can’t fix something.</p><p>“Into the carburettor,” Jack says automatically, having long memorised labelled diagrams of equipment. Then at Gavin’s blank look, “the mixer, the one that mixes air and fuel.”</p><p>He comes over and points it out to Gavin, who says, “Ah, that’s what that is,” before spraying the starter fluid into it. “We should check for rust too, right?” he says, even as he’s already pulling the mower apart.</p><p>“Yeah, we need to check for rust on the coil.”</p><p>After a quick look-over of the coil – no rust, Jack notes – Gavin nods and puts it back before starting to put the mower back together. He’s casual about it, like he’s contemplating what would happen if he put certain bits in different places, and for some reason Jack can’t take his eyes off of him as he does so, the curious way he tilts his head, alternating between picking up and turning over various bits and pieces.</p><p>At some point, Gavin grabs the starter fluid and holds it out to him, and Jack shakes himself in time to accept it from him. He sprays it into the carburettor of his own lawn mower before pulling it apart to check the coil. There’s a bit of rust there, and he grabs some sandpaper and a wire brush to scrub it off.</p><p>Afterwards, they take turns running their respective lawn mowers, and they both work fine. They let them run for a couple of minutes, then turn them off, take out the air filters, clean them, and leave them on one of the benches in the workshop to dry.</p><p>They head back to the main house, but it’s already one in the afternoon so they decide to have lunch. Even that takes a while; they have to shake off (and wipe down) the plastic bins with their food, then unpack them all – including dozens of boxes of tea, giant sacks of flour, jumbo bags of pasta and stacks of packaged meat. With Gavin’s permission, Jack cleans the kitchen – the wooden overhead cabinets and counters, the gas stove, then all the cutlery, dishes, pots and pans – then cooks them spaghetti with packet tomato sauce.</p>
<hr/><p>It’s three when they finally sit down.</p><p>“So, where are you from?” Gavin asks him.</p><p>“Austin, Texas,” Jack answers, digging into his spaghetti. He doesn’t know whether he wants Gavin to ask about it more or not. “What about you?”</p><p>“England. Oxfordshire, if it matters,” Gavin says, tomato sauce around his mouth. “It’s near London.”</p><p>“That sounds nice.”</p><p>“It is.”</p><p>Jack wants to ask him about what it’s like there, what he was doing before this, but he’s not sure if those kinds of questions are too personal, so he can’t get the words out.</p><p>(Also, he’ll inevitably be asked the same questions, and he’s not sure if he’s ready for that.)</p><p>“So, what’s wrong with you?” Gavin asks.</p><p>Jack freezes, halfway to a bite of his pasta. “Excuse me?”</p><p>Gavin has frozen too. It’s like his question slipped out without him noticing, given the deer-in-headlights look he’s giving him now. “Uh, sorry, I didn’t – ” Gavin swallows, before his face evens out and he folds his hands on the table in front of him. “We’re not exactly here for a walk in the park, are we? People only take these kinds of jobs to get away from something. Besides, what’s a Texan doing out here? Isn’t it really hot over there?”</p><p>Jack nods at the last bit. “Yeah, but I like colder areas. I’ve always run warm, and I used to go to Scotland for the holidays.”</p><p>“That’s good. It’ll be mighty cold here, that’s for sure. And Scotland, aye? At least you didn’t say Wales.”</p><p>“What’s wrong with Wales?”</p><p>Gavin gives him an, <em>it should be obvious, </em>look. “I’m English, Jack.” And when Jack doesn’t say anything, “Friendly rivalry, innit? Between us and Wales. You also have to pay five quid to get into Wales from England, the cheeky buggers.”</p><p>Jack snorts with laughter. “That’s very cheeky, and very clever. I’d do that in a heartbeat.”</p><p>Gavin scoffs a laugh. “Of course. Nobody would pass up the chance to sneak a few extra pounds from unsuspecting travellers.” But he’s smiling, so it’s clear no offense has been taken.</p><p>Gavin had put the kettle on a few minutes ago, saying he wanted to make tea, and it’s finished boiling now. As he goes into the kitchen, he asks again, “So…what’s wrong with you? And don’t say ‘I hate warm weather’, you’d have just taken another trip to Scotland or something.”</p><p>It’s true.</p><p>But Jack also can’t say why he came out here. He’d spent months preparing for being here, spent way too much money to do it, but he has no idea if he’ll even get what he came out here for in the first place.</p><p>Jack shrugs, before answering as neutrally as he can. “I’ve been looking for open space in the wild. Can you make me some tea?”</p><p>“Sure. You take it black, right?” Gavin asks, coming back to grab Jack’s thermos.</p><p>“Yeah. Black, no milk or sugar,” Jacks says. He’d become accustomed to it. Tea weighed less than coffee, milk and sugar would have taken up valuable weight, and he figured he’d need the caffeination, so his usual go-to of hot chocolate wouldn’t have worked.</p><p>“Got it. But again, Scotland. Plenty of open fields there. Or Wales, if you want to pay an extra five quid for it. I hear Brecon Beacons is a favourite.”</p><p>“Have you ever been to Wales?”</p><p>Gavin nods as he pours the tea into their thermoses. He’s made his black, too. “Once, as a child. The names of those towns are very unpronounceable. They put three L’s at the start, followed by twenty characters, none of which are vowels. It’s rather ridiculous, that.”</p><p>“I can imagine. ‘Rhythm’ is the longest word I know without vowels, and that’s – ” Jack counts it off with his fingers. “ – only six letters.”</p><p>Gavin hums, bringing their thermoses over. “Here you go.”</p><p>“Thanks.”</p><p>They sip their tea. The warmth of the thermos is a relief against Jack’s cold hands, even with his thick gloves.</p><p>“Why are you out here, anyway? What’s wrong?” Gavin asks.</p><p>So, he won’t let it go.</p><p>“What’s wrong with you?” Jack snaps.</p><p>Gavin tilts his head to the side, contemplative, as he clutches his thermos. “Why don’t you guess?”</p><p>Alright.</p><p>Gavin looks young, and fit, and in the prime of his life. Logically, there’s no reason for him to be out here at all; most caretakers are retirement age, but he looks like he could be in college. Still, there are plenty of reasons for someone to be driven to one of the most remote jobs in the world, so he has some guesses.</p><p>“You…just broke up with someone,” Jack guesses. “You’ve just graduated from college and you’re in a post-college crisis because you did a degree that has no practical use, or you did one that you hate but pays wells and you want to switch anyway.”</p><p>“I haven’t dated anyone in a while, and I didn’t go to college.”</p><p>“Okay then. So…you recently quit your job, or you hate it, for some reason. Or you’re stuck in a creative rut and you’re out here to try and get your mojo back to write that dream idea into a novel that’ll sweep everyone away.”</p><p>Gavin stiffens.</p><p>“Close?” Jack says.</p><p>“Let’s unpack,” Gavin says, getting up from his chair and heading towards the plastic bins stacked in the living room, taking his thermos with him.</p><p>“We need to de-mould first,” Jack reminds him, getting out of his chair. The words come easier now that they’ve both more or less dropped the ball.</p><p>“Oh yeah. Let’s de-mould, then.”</p>
<hr/><p>De-moulding will be a regular thing; mould is inevitable in every building due to the extremely high humidity – it’s a hundred percent today – and low temperatures. In the store-room of the main house, Jack grabs the long-handled mops, while Gavin grabs the clove oil, a bucket and some spray-bottles.</p><p>They’ve been given instructions by Parks and past caretakers for de-moulding: mix a quarter teaspoon of clove oil with a litre of water, put it into spray bottles, spray the mixture on every wall and roof panel, leave for twenty minutes, then mop it off.</p><p>They make up two bottles of clove mixture, then split up to spray different rooms. Jack starts with two of the four bedrooms, where paint flakes off the walls, before moving into the kitchen, where there’s a large wall crack stretching from the top of the window up to the ceiling. Fortunately, it’s a thin hairline crack, something that can be easily taped over and repainted.</p><p>He then moves into the bathroom, which is next to the bedrooms. It’s a surprisingly large space with yellowing tiles, a shower, a bath, a sink and plenty of over and under cabinet storage. There’s a crack in the wall tiles from just above the sink into the ceiling, but there’s no discolouration around it, meaning there’s no leakage. It’ll need to be grouted over before it gets to that point, though.</p><p>The laundry is a tiny space with only a washing machine, a single laundry basket, several outdoor clotheslines, and some pegs. No cracks in the walls at least, and the small room is quick to spray down before Jack heads out into the hallway.</p><p>He runs into Gavin, who says that he’s sprayed the other bedrooms, the living room, and the storeroom. Those are the rest of the rooms, and almost twenty minutes have passed, so they make their way back to the bedrooms and start wiping them down together.</p><p>They don’t talk much; rain cascades down the windows outside, the air still heavy even indoors. Through the spicy sweet scent of clove oil in his nostrils, Jack’s thinking of the mowing they haven’t done, the drainage pipes they’ll have to clear, the generators they’ll need to check, the roads and walking tracks they’ll have to maintain, the seeds they’ll need to plant in the garden and whether they’d grow in such harsh conditions –</p><p>He doesn’t realise he’s been mopping the same section of wall for a while until Gavin taps him on the shoulder. Jack jumps. He thanks him, then gets back to work.</p><p>It takes them several hours to de-mould the house. It’s a much bigger job than expected; they’d had to re-apply the clove mixture to most of the rooms, then wait another twenty minutes before cleaning them off.</p><p>The amount of doubling-back had left Jack uneasy, manifesting in him saying so, but Gavin says that it’s fine, they’ll just need to do one or two rooms at a time next time. He says it so lightly and casually that it makes the wasted mixture and time a little easier to live with.</p><p>After de-moulding, they decide to fore-go de-moulding the other houses to clean the rest of the house instead. They’d already cleaned the kitchen, but Jack offers to clean the bathrooms and laundry; they tend to be more tedious, after all. Gavin looks surprised, but accepts, going off to clean the bedrooms.</p><p>In the bathroom, Jack mops the floor, cleans the toilet, scrubs the shower and makes a note to himself to put new towels in here later. In the laundry, he wipes down the washing machine and laundry basket before mopping the floor. Once he’s done, he emerges to Gavin sitting in the dining room, duster on the table, saying that he’s dusted every other room.</p><p>They’re both satisfied with the other’s work, so they pack up their cleaning tools and head over to the lighthouse to turn on the light. The clockwork mechanism grunts as it’s turned, Gavin straining to turn the metal workings, but Jack helps adjust his technique and after that the light comes on easily. While they’re there, they check up on the generator shed, or the genny shed, as Gavin is calling it, next door.</p><p>The genny shed houses a diesel generator, a battery bank, some old diesel tanks, a compressor, pumping equipment and gas bottles. The diesel generator won’t be their main source of power though. The light in the lighthouse is powered by solar-charged batteries mounted on top of the tower; spare batteries are in the battery bank and diesel will be a back-up. Similarly, each of the houses are powered by solar panels on the roofs, with gas bottles for hot water and cooking, and diesel as a back-up.</p><p>Still, despite assurances from past caretakers that solar power is sufficient, neither Jack nor Gavin are entirely certain that it’ll be enough. Given how much it rains here, it’ll probably be close, and the nearest set of diesel fuel after the lot here is a helicopter ride away.</p><p>Still, Gavin says, they can’t do much about that. Mercy of mother nature, all that. But what they can do is check-up on the power systems, so that’s what they do.</p><p>Jack records the fuel stocks, generator hours, voltage and kilowatt usage; not bad for a first night, he notes. Meanwhile, Gavin goes off to check the condition of all the equipment. Everything’s already oiled, the fuel in the generator is already topped up, and the battery bank is full, no doubt all done by the previous caretakers just before they left. There’s readings for the amount of power left in each of the solar panels too; they’re alright, as good as they can be given the previous two weeks of continuous rain.</p><p>When they emerge from the genny shed, the rain’s gotten heavier, so they rush back to the main house for dinner. Jack asks Gavin whether he wants to cook, but Gavin shakes his head, backing away from the kitchen like it’ll bite him. Odd, but Jack won’t pry.</p><p>He cooks more pasta, since there’s no time to bake bread tonight, and some shaved ham. Gavin had asked whether they’d be having anything from the garden, but since they haven’t had a chance to tend to it yet, Jack hadn’t felt comfortable with it. Not until they’d grown some things themselves, at least, which would be from seeds Jack had bought from the local markets in Hobart a couple of weeks before.</p><p>Again, they don’t talk, other than to agree that they’ll unpack after washing up, but that’s fine. Jack figures they’ll have plenty of time to talk more later.</p><p>They are, after all, each other’s only company.</p>
<hr/><p>Packing had been months of pouring over a live spreadsheet they’d edited together over Cloud – consisting of all the food, toiletries, electronics, sleeping, medical and recreational supplies they’d need for their six month stay – and weighing everything on large kitchen scales, right down to the toothbrush. They’d reduced packaging as much as they could, filling a skip bin each with plastic and cardboard packaging. They’d packed, re-packed, re-packed again, then re-packed everything into the plastic fish bins for Parks.</p><p>It’s almost anti-climactic to unpack it all now.</p><p>Stacks of toothpaste, piles of wool blankets, dozens of adaptors, jumbo bottles of shampoo and shaving cream, thick parkas and pants and underwear, bars upon bars of soap and a well-stocked first-aid kit later, the four-bedroom house is feeling half-familiar with a mix of Jack and Gavin’s things. Jack wonders whether this is what it feels like to move in with a partner, before abruptly remembering that he and Gavin are strangers.</p><p>It feels too impersonal to think of Gavin as a stranger, even though they’d only met eighteen hours ago.</p><p>It’s pitch-black by the time they’re done, so there’s no real chance to work in the gardens. It’s only ten at night, but they’ll need to get up early tomorrow to do the weather readings all over again.</p><p>They fumble their way through who gets to use the bathroom first – Gavin lets Jack go first, who rushes through his nightly routine so Gavin’s not left waiting – and as Jack changes for bed, he can’t help but listen to the gentle patter of footsteps in the bathroom across from him.</p><p>They’re sleeping in separate bedrooms, but Jack can’t help but wonder whether Gavin’s doing okay. About what he’s like.</p><p>If only Jack was better at conversation.</p><p>A blustering wind has started now, and as Jack settles into the cheap, springy mattress, that’s what sings him to sleep.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Updates will be twice a week. Hope you all enjoy =).</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It’s pouring with rain when Jack’s phone alarm blares in the early morning. For a moment, he doesn’t remember where he is – then he hears footsteps from the bedroom next to him, and he remembers.</p><p>Quarters one, on Maatsuyker Island. Gavin.</p><p>Jack’s muscles ache from the previous day’s labour, but he’s got work to do, so he resists burrowing under the blankets and rolls out of bed instead. He gulps in lungfuls of cold air as he dresses in warm layers and stumbles into the bathroom they’ll be sharing. Once he’s washed his face and relieved himself, he feels a little more awake. He ponders taking a shower like he usually does in the morning, but what if Gavin wants to do so first?</p><p>He opens the door to leave and is greeted by shaggy hair and a sleepy yet frantic face falling into him. He grabs Gavin’s arms to stop him in his tracks and is met by a yelped, “Oh!” and suddenly their faces are inches apart.</p><p>It’s been a long time since Jack’s been this close to anyone.</p><p>In the sleepy morning, Gavin’s eyes are a muted green, a twin of Jack’s, and they’re close enough that he could count his eyelashes if he wanted to.</p><p>Then Gavin’s pulling back. “Sorry, I think I left something in the bathroom,” he says, moving past him.</p><p>Jack nods blankly, stepping aside, heart pounding in his chest as Gavin brushes up against him on his way in.</p><p>Jack leaves him alone, heading for the kitchen, and refuses to think about how nice Gavin’s narrow arms had felt beneath his large hands.</p><p>Once Gavin emerges, they put on their head torches, squinting at the brightness, before putting on their wet weather gear and making their way to the weather station. The wind rushes past their ears, fast enough that they have to cling to the railing on the path to get there, lest they be bowled over instead. The ocean swell is even higher today, high enough that Jack can make out the faint outline of white foaming water in the dark. The wind is racing at 60 knots an hour, or 70 miles an hour, which Jack’s eyes bulge at even as he reads it off the bureau laptop.</p><p>After the rest of the weather observations, they head over to quarters two and three to look for mould. It’s starting to come in badly, so they decide to de-mould as much as they can before the radio sked. Jack rushes back to the main house to grab their demoulding supplies, berating himself for not bringing them with him in the first place.</p><p>It takes him twenty minutes of the hour they have to jog the half mile of grassy hills there and back, but it’s worth it for being able to demould the largest room, a combined living-dining-kitchen area in quarters two, during which Gavin updates him on the genny shed, which he’d popped down to check on while Jack had been gone.</p><p>After that, it’s nearly 07:30, so they leave their de-moulding supplies and head back in time for the radio sked. Gavin pulls out breakfast to go along with it, and Jack curses because they’d forgotten the EasiYo yoghurt again.</p><p>He spends half the sked rushing around the kitchen to get it started because he will <em>not </em>forget it for a third time, listening with half an ear to Gavin’s amused chuckles at their forgetfulness and the Maritime’s extra observations. He spends the other half shovelling cereal into his mouth and drumming his fingers against the table as he waits for the kettle to boil over for their tea. Gavin’s already scribbling down the notes from Maritime between mouthfuls of cereal, but he’s watching Jack closely, something oddly curious to it.</p><p>Jack makes their tea as fast as possible, timing it so that their thermoses are ready just as the sked ends at 08:00. Gavin’s done too, so they put their bowls on the counter before going back to quarters two for more demoulding.</p><p>The limited time before the 09:00 weather reading means they split up to de-mould a smaller room each. Jack squeezes in a second room by waiting ten minutes between spraying rooms then rushing to mop them all up in time. It’s a scramble, but it’s better than being consumed with fear at falling behind, lest nature reclaim these long-standing pieces of history.</p><p>Jack’s just finished the second room when he hears Gavin walk in, shouting for him, and he seems surprised but pleased that he’s done a second room. Pride surges through Jack’s chest that carries him through having to leave de-moulding for now – it’s almost 09:00, now – and through the trek down to the Stevenson screen, then the weather station, for the second readings of the day.</p><p>After sending their daily report, it’s time to de-mould the rest of the rooms together. Gavin wants to de-mould one or two rooms at a time, like he’d mentioned yesterday. Jack hesitates, recalling his success at de-moulding two rooms at once, but these rooms are larger and he doesn’t want to risk wasted mixture like yesterday, so he relents.</p><p>It’s much better when they de-mould one or two rooms at a time. It’s time-consuming, tedious work, and the spare time between spraying and mopping for each room feels like an eternity, but it allows them to be much more thorough, and there’s much less double-backing to clear up missed spots. Jack’s happy with the results, though he has to point out a few hidden crevices that Gavin missed.</p><p>Lunchtime rolls around, and after having pasta yet again, Gavin turns down Jack’s offer to cook for tonight, so Jack takes the opportunity to start preparing bread for dinner.</p><p>He starts preheating the oven to pre-warm the mixing bowl, then feels the kettle – hot from the tea they’d had with lunch – so once he’s started warming the mixing bowl he starts running the tap until it’s just warm to the touch. No hotter, though, else it will damage the yeast. It’s instant yeast, which he’s thankful for; he doesn’t think the bread would ever rise in such wet conditions without it. He adds flour, water and yeast into the mixing bowl, then turns off both the tap and the oven.</p><p>Without the stream of water and the hum of the oven, it’s completely silent.</p><p>That’s when he realises that Gavin’s hovering by one of the counters, shoulders hunched, eyes darting to the mixing bowl then away again.</p><p>“You can watch, if you want,” Jack says.</p><p>Gavin’s eyes bulge. “Uh, I didn’t mean…I can leave, if you want – ”</p><p>“No, no, it’s fine,” Jack smiles at him. It hits him in that moment that, “I’ve never had someone watch me cook – or rather, bake before.” <em>It might be nice, </em>he doesn’t say, because people tend to be put off by that kind of sentimentality.</p><p>Gavin blinks rapidly, like he’s not sure whether Jack’s telling the truth or not. But then he takes a tentative step closer. Jack keeps his face relaxed, his posture slack, and Gavin shuffles closer so he’s not hugging the counter anymore.</p><p>There’s something soothing about Gavin’s presence as Jack starts mixing the dough with his hands. When it’s formed a ball, he dusts the counter with flour before starting to knead the dough.</p><p>It’s taking longer than he’d thought for the lumpy dough to smooth out, even though he’d practised endlessly to try and account for the conditions here. Adjustments will need to be made, but that’s fine – that’s just how baking goes.</p><p>It’s still silent. As soothing as Gavin’s presence is, Jack doesn’t want him to feel like he has to stay completely silent, or like he can’t say anything even if he wants to. But it’s not like Jack can come up with good conversation starters.</p><p>“Do you bake, much?” Jack asks, finally.</p><p>Gavin hesitates, hand lightly skimming over the counter. “Not really.”</p><p>“More of a cook?” Jack asks lightly.</p><p>“I can cook pasta,” Gavin says, something defensive about it. “What about you?”</p><p>“I make pasta, burgers and pizza, and I’ve looked up recipes for pies. But I couldn’t figure out how to make burgers here, sorry,” Jack grimaces. “It was hard enough figuring out a bread recipe that could work here.”</p><p>“Bit wet, isn’t it?” Gavin ponders, as rain smacks against the kitchen window in loud patters.</p><p>Jack lets out a startled laugh. “Just a little.”</p><p>Gavin huffs out a short laugh. “What’d you do, to figure out the recipe?”</p><p>That’s how thirty minutes of kneading dough pass, with Gavin asking questions about the recipe, what he’d started with, what he’d changed, which Jack answers eagerly. He doesn’t manage to catch himself before he goes into way too much detail, but Gavin’s eyes brighten, like he’s soaking everything up, and they’re onto the percentage differences in gluten content between whole-wheat and all-purpose flours when the dough smooths out and manages to hold its shape.</p><p>They leave the bread to rest and rise, then it’s time to clear the network of drains. <em>Network </em>is quite the way to describe them; they span several miles, sprawling like the tangled roots of trees between all the houses and the lighthouse, having been made by hand with explosives and hand-tools the same time the lighthouse was built.</p><p>It’s gruelling work, and Jack spends most of his time sweeping rocks out of them with straw brooms and crouching over them to scoop mud from them, because his knees are too weak to kneel on his hands and knees in them like Gavin is. There are so many sticks too, lodged into the drains by the wind and rain, to the point where they’re removing just as many sticks as they are scooping out mud.</p><p>The drains continue around each of the gardens and down the mile-long road, these sections having been added retroactively upon the realisation that even if the lighthouse didn’t have to be constantly manned, the rest of the island would have to be, lest it be reclaimed by mother nature.</p><p>On the road is their kei truck, named “Dave” by past caretakers, which Jack checks up on while they clear the drains. He can’t check the condition of the engine in the rain, but the tyres look like they’ve been recently re-pumped, and despite the rain there’s no hint of rust winning the war against the body of the truck. Satisfied with the truck’s condition, Jack goes back to drain clearing, which Gavin has made good progress on.</p><p>Throughout their drain clearing route, Jack had taken note of anything they needed to fix that they could handle in such heavy rain and wind; there are some rock walls that could do with some fixing, but they’ll have to come back to the rusting metal water tanks when it’s not raining so heavily.</p><p>Once they finish clearing the drains, they go to the workshop to find some wheelbarrows, load them up with spare stones and repair supplies, then head over to the rock walls and talk through fixing them. They’re both fairly amateur at it, but together they manage to figure it out, mostly through filling gaps with lots of concrete and smaller stones.</p><p>Afterwards, they head over to the lighthouse, cleaning the lens and turning on the light at sunset, and then they’re heading back to the main house, their way guided by the light, for dinner.</p><p>The bread is ready to go, so Jack puts it in the oven. The yoghurt maker is done, so he takes the yoghurt out and puts it in the fridge. After that, it’s just waiting for the bread to bake. While waiting, Gavin asks him about hobbies, and the things he’d brought with him to do in his spare time.</p><p>Jack had thought it was obvious, given that they’d shared their packing lists extensively before coming here, but Gavin’s interested in it anyway.</p><p>“Because ‘laptop’ and ‘notebooks’ are obvious hobbies,” Gavin says with such clear sarcasm that Jack lets out a short laugh at it.</p><p>“I like to watch movies,” Jack says.</p><p>“Is that why you packed six external hard drives?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Jack nods. He’d felt okay with it, given that they had no internet here. “I downloaded as many as I could before I left.”</p><p>“What are the notebooks for, then?”</p><p>“They’re for recording weather observations and journaling our experiences here.”</p><p>“That sounds nice. I figured that if I wanted to do any journaling, I’d just type it up on my laptop.”</p><p>“That’s fair enough. I’m too used to writing on paper, and I didn’t want to just rely on my laptop for everything.”</p><p>“I haven’t written anything in – wow, since school.”</p><p>“Really? Not even for your job?”</p><p>Jack realises too late that he probably shouldn’t be asking about jobs, or anything outside of life on the island.</p><p>Gavin pauses, then he shrugs. “Not really, no.”</p><p>So, Gavin’s probably not a writer or visual artist then. It makes sense; he hadn’t packed any painting, drawing, or writing supplies like most caretakers do.</p><p>Jack, on the other hand, had packed some pencils, because why not? At best, he would get to sketch something, at worst, he had extra stuff to write down observations with.</p><p>“What are you planning to do then, while you’re here?” Jack asks him.</p><p>“Take photos, record videos.”</p><p>“Is that why there were a million rain covers on your packing list, then?”</p><p>“Of course. You gotta protect your camera, don’t you?”</p><p>“Yeah, but I didn’t realise that your camera was your primary hobby.”</p><p>“I brought movies too,” Gavin says. “Besides, it’s not like I could bring my Xbox with me.”</p><p>“You play Xbox?”</p><p>That’s how they get into a conversation about video games that lasts well into dinner – their tiny but tasty loaf of bread with deli meats – and tea. At some point, Jack comments that the choppy waves outside remind him of the game <em>Raft</em>. Gavin says that he hasn’t played it, but that given the name, he can only imagine its close resemblance.</p><p>“Are you a fish boy, Jack?”</p><p>“Am I a <em>what</em>?”</p><p>“A fish boy. Do you like to eat fish,” Gavin clarifies.</p><p>Jack shakes his head, going to boil more water. He’s already had three thermoses of tea today and he’s ready for another one. “Not really. I only eat fish when I know that it’s fresh from the ocean, and Austin’s not near one.”</p><p>“What about in Hobart then, while you were training?”</p><p>“Yeah, I went to a couple of seafood restaurants by one of the piers in the city centre. What about you?”</p><p>Gavin nods, sipping his thermos. “Same. Had some prawns, a good bit of salmon. Nice stuff. Shame we can’t fish here.”</p><p>“That would have been useful,” Jack comments. They’d both known beforehand that fishing off the thousand-foot cliffs, or anywhere else on the island, wasn’t possible or allowed, respectively, no matter how close to the ocean they were. “At least then we wouldn’t have had to pack so much meat.”</p><p>“Speaking of which, do you want more pepperoni?”</p><hr/><p>On the third day, Gavin’s out of the shower by the time Jack wakes up, who races through a shower of his own before 06:00 rolls around.</p><p>They finally get around to checking the vegetable garden between weather observations. The garden is inside a plastic hoop greenhouse and smells delightfully fresh, but they resist the temptation to take anything from it just yet; Jack’s insistence, despite Gavin wanting to give things a try, because there’s a carrot in the corner that’s all wonky-shaped and how amusing is that?</p><p>To their joint delight, there’s no rain today, just gale-force winds and bauble-shaped cloud formations that make the island look completely different to how it’s been the past two days, but it’s no less majestic.</p><p>Jack wonders if the scenery will constantly change throughout their stay, and he has to stop himself from watching the clouds float by because he’s got work to do, damnit.</p><p>While there’s no rain, they agree to continue mowing from the first day. They race through it for fear that the whipping winds would flip their mowers over. Well, Jack does; Gavin’s mower is bigger than him, so he just goes as fast as he can.</p><p>Thankfully, their mowers are meaty, being hefty enough to chew through grass like it’s nothing and withstand the wailing winds. But even then, they’re only able to finish mowing around the secret garden, the weather station, the helipad and the communications towers when they need to break for a late lunch.</p><p>Jack asks Gavin what he wants for lunch, and after he says pizza, Jack starts making up pizza dough, saying that Gavin’s free to ask questions if he wants. He takes this to heart, asking about crusts – he prefers a thin crust, while Jack prefers something thicker – and toppings – meat, always meat, Jack says – to which Gavin asks whether Jack is one of <em>those </em>people, the ones who put meat on their burgers and nothing else, to which Jack proudly says he is.</p><p>“Not even a little bit of lettuce?”</p><p>“No. Why put one bit of lettuce when you can put none?” Jack asks as he starts kneading the dough.</p><p>“But don’t you want a bit of <em>crunch </em>to it?”</p><p>“Vegetables aren’t exactly my favourite thing in the world.”</p><p>“We have a whole <em>garden </em>of them here,” Gavin stares at him incredulously.</p><p>Which, yeah, that is a good point.</p><p>“Wait, is that why you’re not willing to take anything from it?” Gavin asks incredulously.</p><p>“We don’t know whether the seeds I got will grow here or not,” Jack reminds him.</p><p>“Yeah, but the birds will probably get to them first. The tomatoes looked particularly good.”</p><p>That’s probably true; the small tomatoes on the vine had been the freshest, strongest smell in the garden that morning.</p><p>“Maybe we could bring the tomatoes in, then? We have a fridge here, so we can store them for a while. If we need to, we can always jar or freeze them,” Jack says, having brought preserving supplies with him.</p><p>“Sounds good,” Gavin nods. “Though I’d prefer to try a couple of things fresh before we go ham with preserving them.”</p><p>Jack hesitates. He’d intended to store them in the fridge just so the birds wouldn’t get to them, not to consume them. The nearest food resupply was six months and a helicopter away…</p><p>But maybe their seeds will grow, and one or two things can’t hurt, right?</p><p>“Okay,” he says, finally. “Just one or two things.”</p><p>After Jack finishes kneading the dough, they spend the time waiting for it to rise by harvesting everything from the garden they think the birds would get to first. It’s a lot more than they both think; there’s the tomatoes, and also a couple of zucchinis and carrots. Everything’s tiny compared to what’s in the supermarkets, but there’s something wonderous in picking tomatoes off the vine, in digging hands through soil to unveil dirt-covered vegetables; roots, stems and all.</p><p>“This is like that whack-a-mole game in <em>Mario Party 8,</em>” Gavin says, as he holds up carrot, its bright green stem twice as long as the vegetable itself.</p><p>“I didn’t play Mario Party 8,” Jack comments, scrubbing the dirt from a carrot of his own. “I didn’t realise that arcade games went beyond <em>Mortal Kombat.</em>”</p><p>“I prefer <em>Dive Kick, </em>myself,” Gavin says. “But yeah, in Mario Party 8 there’s this team game where one person has a hammer and whacks moles coming out of the ground while the other pulls carrots out and chucks them into a truck.”</p><p>“Is the truck anything like Dave?” Jack asks as he does a last inspection of the plants. Nothing else seems ready yet. Hopefully, the birds won’t get there before then.</p><p>“I’m not sure, actually. I’ll have to check. Wait, I can’t google anything, can I?”</p><p>“We don’t have internet here, so no, you can’t.”</p><p>“Damn,” Gavin says, looking around the garden. “I haven’t spotted anything else to harvest, what about you?”</p><p>“No, nothing else,” Jack shakes his head. “Might be time to head back in?”</p><p>They go back in to put the vegetables away in the fridge. The pizza dough hasn’t risen enough for toppings yet, but they agree to use store-bought sauces, deli-meats and a sprinkling of cheese to go on top. Parmesan, since hard cheeses last longer than soft ones like mozzarella, which they hadn’t brought.</p><p>Gavin asks him about his favourite cheeses, and after trading favourites, Jack asks him whether he’d tried any cheese in Hobart.</p><p>Gavin hadn’t, not being much of a cheese enthusiast, though he did enjoy parmesan on pizza. It wasn’t much of a surprise; he’d said similarly over Skype while packing. He also wasn’t a fan of pepper jack, though he assures him that there’s no relation to Jack himself, which Jack chuckles at.</p><p>Jack himself hadn’t tried any cheese in Hobart either – he’d heard more about the fish than the cheese, though he’s trying to remember if he’d had any Australian cheeses. There’d been something called Bega cheese, but he thinks that might have been a brand, not a type.</p><p>Gavin tests the name out – <em>Bega </em>– and comments that it sounds like beta, as in betas for video games. He asks what he likes to eat with cheese normally, such as whether he likes having wine with it. Jack doesn’t, but he did go to Cascade Brewery in Hobart and try a bunch of their beers.</p><p>They talk beers. Jack had already known that Gavin only drunk beer in social settings, and as someone who didn’t drink much beer himself he’d known not to bring any for their trip, but Gavin frequents pubs in England so he knows all sorts of beers that Jack has never heard of.</p><p>That turns into a conversation about the difference between pubs and bars, where what Gavin’s describing as a bar sounds more like a nightclub, to which Gavin asks where do people sit down and have a good beer and some food in America, and Jack says a good barbeque place that also serves alcohol.</p><p>That turns into a conversation about barbeque and take-away places. Gavin gets take-away as a substitute to cooking and he likes to try new places, so he’s quite the expert on them. As a fellow take-away connoisseur, Jack’s riveted by the sheer variety of places he’s been, and they end up comparing places Gavin has been to with similar places that Jack’s been to in Austin.</p><p>They’re onto various sandwich places by the time the pizza dough has risen, and as they put on their pizza toppings Gavin’s talking about how Gregg’s in England is nothing like Subway, or at least he doesn’t think so, to which Jack admits he doesn’t know either, given that he doesn’t go to Subway.</p><p>The conversation tapers off by the time the pizzas are in the oven, and Jack’s suddenly struggling with what else to say. Planting their vegetable seeds in the garden would be possible; it’s not like they can mow in the half-hour it would take for the pizzas to cook. But he doesn’t want to seem bossy or impose work during this jointly designated lunch break, nor does he want to break this nice conversational atmosphere they’ve got here. Not that it’s really continuing since Jack doesn’t know what to say now.</p><p>The thing is, that’s happened a lot. <em>Will </em>happen a lot, while they’re here. He can’t tell whether Gavin’s a person who finds silence uncomfortable, but Jack knows he needs to ask him about it. Jack tends to assume that everyone finds silence comfortable, only to realise too late that they were waiting, waiting, waiting for him to say something, and had already jumped to the conclusion that Jack was standoffish or aloof.</p><p>Assuming that someone is comfortable with silence is an assumption Jack can’t afford to make, and the need to address it overrides the sudden tightness in his chest.</p><p>“Hey Gavin, can I ask you something?”</p><p>“Sure, what is it?”</p><p>“Are you comfortable with silence?”</p><p>Gavin doesn’t answer for a while, seeming to ponder the question. “Is it awkward?” he says, finally.</p><p>“I don’t know, is it?” Jack asks, helplessness surging through him. Then it all tumbles out. “It’s just that I tend to go for long times without speaking. I’m not one of those people who can talk endlessly for hours on end.”</p><p>“You don’t need to,” Gavin tells him hastily. “I can’t either. We don’t need to keep up conversation <em>all </em>the time, or even a lot of the time. Maybe it can be a, ‘if it happens, it happens’, sort of thing?”</p><p>That sounds good, but… “And what happens if it doesn’t?”</p><p>“Then it doesn’t,” Gavin shrugs. “No point forcing conversation if there isn’t any.”</p><p>It’s a good point.</p><p>“That’s true,” Jack says. “But I want you to know that you shouldn’t take it personally if I don’t say anything for long periods of time, or even an entire day.”</p><p>Gavin nods. “Thanks, I appreciate it. Same back at you, too.”</p><p><em>Same back at you </em>– it takes Jack a second to puzzle that one out, but once he gets Gavin’s sentiment he says, “Thank you. ”</p><p>They don’t say anything more, but the air feels much lighter now, as they wait for their pizzas to be done. It’s silent but for the winds roaring under the front door, and Jack thinks he can hear a tune in it if he listens hard enough.</p><hr/><p>By the time they’re done with lunch, the wind has been traded for pouring rain. Jack forces himself to calm down from his roiling thoughts at the mowing left undone with the thought that the two plant tracks are full of plants anyway – grass going over their heads would just be another – and that the road is mainly for the kei truck, whose big wheels won’t have an issue with driving over long grass.</p><p>They use the late rainy afternoon to plant Jack’s locally bought seeds, from pumpkin to cabbage, from potatoes to strawberries. Gavin starts huffing over them and all the other plants in the garden, and when Jack asks him about it, he says that <em>it’s to give them carbon dioxide, Jack</em>. He says it so matter-of-factly that Jack nearly ends up doing the same thing just because of Gavin’s conviction, even though none of their training or gardening books had said anything about it.</p><p>For dinner that night, Gavin manages to convince Jack to try a couple of the tomatoes that are now in the fridge – vegetables are best fresh, after all. When they make them into slices and put them on top of the leftover pizza, Jack swears that he’s never tasted tomatoes so juicy and sweet; from Gavin’s wide-eyed look and eager munching, it seems that he feels the same.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Hope you guys enjoy this chapter. Totally up for detailed feedback and stuff =).</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Habits are odd things. Here are the ones Jack notices about Gavin over the next few days:</p><ol>
<li>Gavin always gets up first. Jack wakes to the shower running, or the buzz of a shaver against a beard. Sometimes he’ll hear footsteps, or nothing at all, which means Gavin’s heading to or is already at the kitchen making tea. The first time, he hadn’t made any for Jack, unsure as to what his morning habits were, but after a couple of days Jack’s gotten used to emerging from the bathroom, still groggy despite showering and shaving, to a pre-made thermos of tea.</li>
<li>Gavin does not like doing laundry. At all. For the first few days he literally leaves his dirty clothes in a pile on the laundry floor instead of putting them in the washing machine, and when Jack finishes showering and goes to put his dirty clothes in the machine, he finds that it’s already full, machine unstarted. This happens three times before Jack brings it up with Gavin, because cleaning is a sticking point amongst roommates and he doesn’t want to impose, but he can’t let it continue without at least asking him about it. That’s how Gavin tells him that he thinks laundry is a waste of time, though he’s happy to hold the pegs while hanging the washing outside if needed.</li>
<li>Gavin’s definition of cleaning the bathrooms and laundry is different to Jack’s. They take turns cleaning the house as needed, but Gavin’s not the kind to clean the shower, change the towels or mop the floor. When Jack brings it up with him, Gavin admits that he’s not used to cleaning so thoroughly since the floor doesn’t get that dirty and the shower’s always wet, isn’t it, but he’s happy to clean both. The first time he goes to mop Jack runs into him staring at it blankly, which he finds out is because up until Maatsuyker he literally hadn’t mopped <em>anything </em>before, simply copying Jack’s technique for de-moulding. Gavin’s mop jobs end up being pretty sloppy – they’re mostly diagonal swipes that leave half the tiles and all the corners untouched – but Jack appreciates Gavin’s efforts none-the-less.</li>
<li>Gavin will perch himself on the kitchen counter to watch Jack cook and bake, tilting his head like the green rosella that had flown by the other day. He’ll turn down all offers from Jack to join in, but he’ll watch, enraptured, anyway.</li>
<li>Gavin will stack stones and tools onto wooden planks to transport for repair jobs before heaving the whole thing over his shoulder, yelping when they inevitably tumble off like a seesaw. Jack had been concerned he’d pulled his shoulder, shouting his worry as he ran over to him, but Gavin had laughed it off before making an even higher stack to try and heave. He does this no matter how many repair jobs they do or how close the wheelbarrows and the truck they use to transport such supplies are.</li>
<li>After dinner, they’ll wash the dishes together. Through some unspoken agreement, Jack will wash them, and Gavin will dry them. He seems oddly unsure here, just like he is with cooking, and while Jack still doesn’t classify himself as an in-charge person, he’s happy to guide Gavin through it all, especially since he seems lost without a dishwasher.</li>
<li>After final dishes, they part for the night so that they can give each other their own space. Gavin tends to stay up late – Jack’s never once heard him turn his bedroom light off – but while Jack will wander around the house (and more, but he won’t tell Gavin that), Gavin always stays in his room with the door shut.</li>
</ol><hr/><p>It takes a while for Jack to realise that two weeks have passed.</p><p>Time passes oddly, here. The wind is a constant howl outside their windows, the torrential rain a temperamental mistress, and the days are measured by sunrises and sunsets.</p><p>The weather is seven days a week, so their work is seven days a week. After their daily weather observations, they alternate between de-moulding, drain clearing and mowing the lawns based on the weather. Between those three main jobs, there is a lot of maintenance, whether that be of the other buildings, the power systems, the water systems or of their tools, equipment, machinery and various bits of infrastructure around the island, work that leaves steady aches burning through every muscle of their bodies.</p><p>Basic maintenance is simple: oil, grease and lubricate all equipment and machinery regularly. Many hours are spent doing this for everything in the workshop and the genny shed, but the indoor work ends up being a nice refuge from the wailing wind outside; as long as they don’t forget to wedge a smooth plank in the door first, lest nature slam it shut and right off its hinges again.</p><p>Gavin had been quite amused by that, joking about how the three little pigs should have done that to keep the wolf out; just literally build their home on an island like this one and it would have been fine. It’s such a random thought that fixing the door ends up becoming a spot of humour in Jack’s memory instead of the lingering feelings of failure that something like this would normally have left.</p><p>At the lighthouse, they carefully clean the delicate lens for the light each day, just before they turn on the light. Gavin has taken a particular liking to them, saying that they remind him of the sensors on his cameras. He’s also taken to the solar-powered batteries in the genny shed and the solar panels on every house, and it’s nice to see his eyes shine so bright as they check-up on them together.</p><p>Repairs form the larger part of their maintenance. There are many days where they end up walking a lap around the island to determine what needs to be fixed, before coming back to load up Dave with supplies – or the wheelbarrows if it’s raining too much – and going over to fix things.</p><p>It’s tough, especially since they have to figure out how to repair things with just the scraps on the island, but Gavin thinks outside the box and is willing to experiment, to give things a go even if they might not work – much better than Jack’s by-the-book scepticism.</p><p>But to Jack’s surprise, Gavin seems to have taken his scepticism in his stride, like he gets a point in some game he’s playing for how many ways Jack will question his proposed ideas for how to fix this broken hand tool or wooden panel or fence or rusted water tank. Gavin doesn’t have much practical experience, but he puzzles things out. His answers are streams of consciousness, full of wonder and curiosity, able to keep up with Jack’s mix of practical and theoretical knowledge. They end up taking a lot of time to do things, but together they manage to figure things out.</p><p>At sunset, one of them – usually Gavin – will tend to the lighthouse, then they’ll meet up back home for dinner. One night, Jack asks whether Gavin wants to help with dinner like he has every night, expecting a no like always.</p><p>Instead, he gets a yes. A hesitant, small yes, but a yes none-the-less.</p><p>Jack beams.</p><p>Gavin isn’t willing to pre-heat the mixing bowl or anything like that, but he’s happy to mix pizza dough and knead it. He huffs his way through it, saying that it looked so much easier than this. Jack laughs, saying that’s how most things look. Gavin has to take frequent tea breaks and his arms are jelly-like by the end of it, but it’s fun anyway. Hard work looks good on Gavin, with sweat on his brow, but there’s something unique about kitchen work, in how flour powders his face and clothes, no apron because they hadn’t had the room to pack one.</p><p>Gavin laughs extra boisterously that night as they dig into their pizzas, and it’s wonderful to see such joy on his face. They’d prepared the veggies together too, which is also new, and Gavin keeps poking at the much thicker veggie chunks he’d ended up chopping, since he hadn’t had much experience chopping vegetables (“I thought you cooked pasta with veggies?” “I get my veggies pre-cut, Jack,” which shouldn’t surprise Jack but had).</p><p>After that, it’s like the floodgates have opened. Gavin joins him for cooking every night, assisting him with dinner. He tends to get distracted, letting the veggies burn on the stove or pastry goods overcook in the oven, but he gets better at it, helped by setting alarms on his phone.</p><p>Once he’s settled into the routine of alarm-setting and not burning things, Gavin then gets distracted by the chemistry behind it all, of all the possible effects of slightly altering the recipe that he hadn’t thought of when he’d just been watching Jack instead. For instance, what if they add a bit more flour, or mix things in a slightly different way, or fry the fresh vegetables for different amounts of time? It’s this same mentality that makes him so good with repairs, but Jack has to stop him before he gets too carried away, otherwise they’ll never make anything.</p><p>He has to stop him in the garden too, because he’s endlessly curious about the weeds, often borrowing one of Jack’s notebooks to sketch them because <em>they’re interesting shapes, Jack, and what do you mean we can’t compost them? They’re organic waste too, like our other food waste, right? </em>They’re not, Jack insists, and he doesn’t want to risk it because they’re <em>weeds </em>and the plants here are under enough turmoil without harmful plants being literally incorporated into the soil they grow in.</p><p>They don’t spend all their time together, though. There are hours, then days, where they’ll separate, with one of them going to de-mould while the other clears the drains. Jack prefers de-moulding and Gavin prefers drain clearing, so it works out nicely.</p><p>Sometimes Jack will instead spend the day gardening, or with Gavin’s permission, cooking lunch, whereas Gavin doesn’t feel comfortable doing either without Jack there, especially cooking. Other times one of them will walk around the island looking for things they need to repair then meetup so that they can fix them together. Gavin also likes to spend his solo days in the genny shed and the workshop or checking up on the solar panels, which have stored a good amount of energy even though they haven’t had a full day of sun yet.</p><p>It’s good to separate like this, even beyond their time apart after their duties are done for the night. It’s a way to cope with the close and inescapable company of only each other. It’s a way to decompress, beyond the now-rhythmic motions of wiping down walls and mowing lawns.</p><p>There’s something lonely in it, too, those days alone, like the world is a million miles away. In many ways, it is. The ocean expands farther than the eye can see, no signs of the bustling civilisation that Jack’s gotten so used to. No downtown to travel to, no bars to drink at, no sleepy cafes. Only dirt pathways through sprawling shrubbery to traverse.</p><p>Jack enjoys tending the shrubbery and working in the gardens the most. It reminds him of the vegetable garden he’d had as a child, of the rose bushes he’d lovingly pruned in the backyard. Together with his training at Hobart, caring for the various plants across the island comes as naturally as breathing, and there’s something grounding about patting compost made from their vegetable scraps around tentatively sprouting vegetable plants, of tenderly weeding them, of carefully watering them in their little pots and making sure the door of the hoop house is always shut to make sure they don’t get drowned by the horizontal rain or blown away by the wind. Of watching them slowly flourish under his and Gavin’s hands as the days go by.</p><hr/><p>They get their first full day of sun a week later.</p><p>Gavin totally calls it too, for there’s a bit more spring in his step as he greets Jack with his thermos of tea. It’s Gavin’s suggestion to open the windows and doors of all the buildings and the lighthouse to air them out that morning, which Jack hesitates over but does anyway.</p><p>Still, Jack doesn’t think the good weather will last, but after the radio sked with Maritime and the second weather observation, everything seems to check out.</p><p>When Gavin asks whether they can take the day off to go see the seals, Jack can barely manage to remind him that they need to re-paint all the buildings and fences first. It’s the first full day of sun since they left the mainland, after all, probably their one chance of re-painting all the buildings without risk of everything getting washed off.</p><p>They make quick but thorough work of it, soaking in the sun’s warm rays, then Gavin’s practically throwing his wall paint roller aside before bounding across the sprawling grass, camera in hand.</p><p>Jack huffs at him fondly, before carefully setting his roller down nearby and following him. Jack can’t quite keep up with him, not even after becoming acclimated to all the exercise they do through caretaking, but Gavin doesn’t seem to mind. He patiently waits for Jack to catch up, beaming so brightly that it reminds Jack of lost childhoods, of being able to run free – and is suddenly hit by the notion that they <em>can</em>, because they’re the only ones here<em>.</em></p><p>They trek north, through the shrubby tea tree track and further up, before making their way down a steep track to a rocky cove just as the first deep, guttural seal sound starts in the distance.</p><p>They’d taken care to not wear bright colors, and they kept their steps careful as they hunkered down against the rocky slopes a safe distance from the inquisitive fur seals that were just starting to notice them.</p><p>They perk up, briefly, before laying back down on the rocks they were perched on. There were dozens, hundreds of them – some emerging from the ocean but most having already splayed themselves out on the rocks to use as a haulage site.</p><p>The rocks are by the old shipping docks, a relic of lightkeepers gone by survived only by rusted metal beams. They’re bordered by jagged cliffs, making this the only place on the island safe enough from the winds for boats to dock, the secluded site having been reclaimed by the seals.</p><p>Some of the seals were napping but others were wide awake, honking as they played with each other, flapping their forearms against each other.</p><p>Gradually, more of the brown mounds were starting to move, from rocks that Jack had thought were barren. When he points out the extra seals to Gavin, he covers his mouth as he giggles, saying that he thought they were piles of turds they blended in so well.</p><p>Then Gavin gasps, and when Jack gives him an inquisitive look, Gavin points towards a bunch of large seals in the distance. Next to them are a bunch of little turds. It takes Jack a while to realise that they are a bunch of little seals, undoubtably last year’s pups, baby mounds scattered amongst the large ones. They’re too far away to see what they’re doing, but the baby seals are curled up close to their parents, so they’re probably sleeping.</p><p>They’re beautiful.</p><p>Jack is captivated as he just – watches. Watches as the seals stretch themselves out, as they honk, as they call for their fellow seals, as they move across the rocks, uncaring for how slippery the rocks are from the crashing waves in front of them. As they play, free of inhibitions other than hauling out for the day, taking care of themselves and enjoying the world around them.</p><p>Jack wants to be like that.</p><p>(Knows that he can’t, but maybe he can stop and ‘smell the roses’ every once in a while.)</p><p>They end up watching and listening to the seals for hours, hours that will live in Jack’s memory forever. Of deep, guttural howls and honks against sprawling rocks, the taste of salt in the air crashing through his nostrils in time with the choppy waves, of joy expressed so freely, like there’s nothing wrong with the world.</p><hr/><p>The next week is nothing but pouring rain and gale-force winds. The rain transforms into hail, pounding against the glass, and the wind howls and swirls, battering the windows like there’s no barrier between them and the elements.</p><p>The harsh weather is always a constant here, but there would usually be brief respites, whether that be a day of wind but no rain, or a swap between heavy rain and wind, or even a couple of hours of sun. There’s something disheartening about waking up to nothing but grey, to a biting chill across your cheeks spreading down to your toes as you have to get up at dawn with stiff-from-cold fingers and trudge outside anyway to waterlogged tracks and boots and faces. But now –</p><p>Now Jack wakes up to the grey cold outside his window, and the sounds of shivering in the next room.</p><p>Jack quickly gets dressed in the dark, in the thickest warm layers he has, before knocking on the door to Gavin’s room. He can barely make out a whimper, a shuffling of bedsheets.</p><p>(Maybe he shouldn’t have come here, maybe he woke Gavin up. Maybe – )</p><p>A much louder shiver this time, and Jack’s opening the door before he can second-guess himself again.</p><p>Gavin’s cocooned in his doona, curled up around it tightly, their only heater on the floor nearby. But for how he’s shivering, they might as well not be there at all. He turns over to face Jack, and his eyes are wide open, his teeth chattering.</p><p>“Gavin?” Jack rushes over to him.</p><p>Gavin doesn’t say anything, just huddles into himself further.</p><p>Jack puts his hand on Gavin’s forehead, and his eyes widen. He immediately starts to pull off his own jackets and thermal shirts, cold be damned. “You’re freezing,” he says, nudging at the blankets.</p><p>“Wh–What a-are you d-doing?” Gavin stammers.</p><p>“You’re going to get hypothermia if we don’t warm you up,” Jack says, sitting on the bed next to him. “Sharing body heat is the best way to do that.”</p><p>“D-doesn’t ex-explain w-why you n-need to be sh-shirtless,” Gavin mumbles, but starts to unwrap himself from his cocoon anyway.</p><p>Jack slips into the bed next to him, being careful not to let any warm air out, then pulls Gavin close to him. “Skin-to-skin contact is the best way to do it.” He hesitates, because this next part might make Gavin uncomfortable, but at the end of the day, even if he’s angry, at least he’ll be okay. “Could you – if you’re not comfortable with it, it’s fine, but it’s more effective if you remove your shirt as well.”</p><p>Gavin bites his lip, then nods, with a full body shiver. “Could you – could you help me? I can’t – I can’t feel my arms right now.”</p><p>Jack nods, before reaching over and gently lifting Gavin’s arms and pulling his thermal shirts off. He tosses them on top of the covers before wrapping his arms around him, pulling him against his bare chest. There’s nothing he can do but hold him, and Gavin shivers again before burrowing into Jack’s chest, his socked feet cold against Jack’s shins.</p><p>For once, Jack is grateful that he has such a large frame; his arms easily encase the small expanse of Gavin’s back, his narrow shoulders, his smaller arms. Gavin’s already placed his hands between their chests, a slight tickle against Jack’s chest hair, and as the minutes go by, Jack’s world is how cold Gavin’s skin is, how small Gavin feels in his arms, how he really should have brought the blankets from his room with him.</p><p>But gradually Gavin’s skin warms up, and his breaths aren’t so cold anymore, and when his shivering isn’t so pronounced Jack sighs with relief.</p><p>Then an alarm rings from the next room.</p><p>Jack curses. That means it’s 05:40, twenty minutes before their first weather reading. Gavin whimpers, like he knows that’s what it means too.</p><p>“I can do the weather readings by myself,” Jack offers. “That way you can stay in bed until the radio sked.”</p><p>“Jack, you don’t have to, I can come as well.” Gavin’s already trying to move the blankets off himself, but Jack catches his arm instead.</p><p>“You need to stay here and keep warm,” Jack says firmly. “I’ll bring all of my blankets over here on the way, so that you can at least have something else. I can bring tea for you as well if you want?”</p><p>Gavin stares at him, the defiance in it broken by a full-body shiver, and he sags, letting the blankets fall over himself again. “Thanks Jack. Tea would be nice, too. After the weather readings, of course.”</p><p>Jack nods. He gently squeezes Gavin’s arms before pulling back, carefully getting out of the cocoon so that heat doesn’t escape. He looks over at Gavin, and he’s burrowed himself in the blankets again, but he doesn’t look as cold as he did before Jack came in, which is a relief.</p><p>Jack throws his thermal shirts and jackets back on, hurries back to his room, grabs all his blankets, and hurries back to Gavin’s room. He lays the blankets on top of Gavin before tucking them around him, and he leaves after hearing the mumbled <em>thanks </em>from inside the cocoon.</p><p>A weather observation and a boiled kettle later, Jack’s slipping off his wet weather gear to dry on the dining chairs before going back to pick up Gavin’s thermos of tea. After a moment of hesitation, he decides to bring the radio along too, as well as his notebook and pen; if they can get reception for the sked in the living room, surely they could get it in Gavin’s room too.</p><p>He knocks on Gavin’s door, and once he hears a mumbled, “Come in,” Jack steps in and sets the tea, radio, notebook and pen on Gavin’s bedside table. It’s only slightly warmer in here than it is outside; their one heater is tiny, barely outputting anything even at maximum power.</p><p>“Here’s your tea. I brought the radio too, so we can listen to the radio sked here.”</p><p>“Thanks. I hadn’t even thought of that,” Gavin mumbles, slowly sitting up, blankets wrapped around him. He snakes an arm out to grab the thermos and bring it to his lips, taking a big gulp before putting it down. “That’s nice. Still feel a bit cold, though.”</p><p>“Want me to join you again?”</p><p>From Gavin’s surprised look, he seems to have thought that Jack wouldn’t have offered so freely, but he nods. “If you’re sure, then yeah, that’d be great.”</p><p>“Of course.”</p><p>Jack carefully lifts up the blankets and gets in beside Gavin, pulling off his jackets and thermal shirts again before pulling Gavin into his arms. Gavin wraps his arms around him tightly, nuzzling his head into his chest. His cheeks feel pleasantly warm, heated by the tea and blankets, and Jack sighs before resting his head on top of Gavin’s.</p><p>“You can have the tea too, if you want,” Gavin says after a moment.</p><p>It’s so casual, so <em>domestic</em>, and Jack’s completely thrown off.</p><p>“I mean, it’s your tea,” Jack fumbles out, finally. “I mean, we don’t typically share things. Not that I mind, but - ”</p><p>Gavin shrugs. “You can just turn it around and drink it from the other side. ’Sides, you gotta be cold too, right, giving all this heat to me? Also, your cheeks are cold.”</p><p>“Sorry,” Jack immediately lifts his head from Gavin’s. “I was outside.”</p><p>“No, no, it’s fine, it feels nice,” Gavin says, nuzzling his head upwards so he nudges Jack’s cheek anyway. “But maybe the tea would help?”</p><p>At that moment, the wind rattles the window frames again, a roaring lion threatening to topple their home like a house of cards. Jack has gotten used to it, but that doesn’t make it any less terrifying. Here in the dark, it’s just him and Gavin, tiny and cold and huddled beneath both their blankets, the world outside an abyss threatening to swallow them up, and he suddenly thinks, <em>well, fuck it.</em></p><p>So Jack reaches out of the blankets with one hand and picks up the thermos, turning it around and sipping it from the other side. “Okay, so I’ve sipped from the opposite side of the label,” he tells him, putting the thermos back on the bedside table before burrowing back in with Gavin. Jack sighs as the pleasant heat of the tea spreads through him. “That is nice, yeah.”</p><p>“Mmhmm,” Gavin hums, his breaths warm on Jack’s chest. “What do you want to do now?”</p><p>“I figured we could go back to sleep until the radio sked.”</p><p>“Really?” Gavin actually lifts his head at that. “I figured you’d want to check the road for fallen trees again or something.”</p><p>“Yeah, but we need to make sure you don’t get hypothermia. And it’s been a long week.”</p><p>“Huh,” Gavin gives him a considering look, and Jack has no idea what he’s thinking.</p><p>“What is it?”</p><p>“Just – you’re all about the work, you know?” Gavin mumbles. His beard-prickly chin isn’t tickling Jack’s chest anymore and he finds that he misses it. “As in, no matter what, we have to do the work, kind of mentality. You’re always a busy type, you know? I feel like you never…stop. Take a breather, or whatever. Like, I admire it, but…it’s too much of the same, isn’t it?”</p><p>It’s true.</p><p>There’s always something to do on the island, something to fix or maintain or prepare. Jack’s always been the kind to get pre-occupied with work, and here it’s 24/7.</p><p>Even after they finish up their duties for the night, Jack will run into some other thing he needs to do and go off to do it alone – relying on night-vision and the lighthouse to guide him – because he doesn’t want to bother Gavin. He can count on one hand the number of mornings Gavin hasn’t had to remind him to have breakfast because he gets so wrapped up in their duties. A month in and he’s only managed to watch two movies, because if he demoulds the houses tonight then they won’t need to do so tomorrow morning; if he replaces the rotting wooden fences now then they’ll have more time to clear drains later; if he puts in the hard work now maybe he can breathe later.</p><p>But here in the dark, with Gavin curled up into him, it feels like none of those duties matter. What matters is sheltering the tentatively warm body against him from the winds and rain howling equally viciously around them. In making sure Gavin’s okay.</p><p>Them. Here and now, in this moment.</p><p>(Jack’s heart catches.)</p><p>“Let’s take a breather, then. But I um, I can’t figure out what to talk about…” he murmurs, trailing off as self-consciousness overtakes him.</p><p>Gavin doesn’t seem to care. He settles his head back on Jack’s chest, body pliant against his. “Hmm. Million dollars, but…”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Jack’s spreading tomato sauce on their pizzas for dinner that night when socked feet shuffle in. It’s Gavin, hands stuffed in the pockets of Jack’s spare hoodie, a matching pair of trackpants tightly knotted but still hanging low on his hips.</p><p>(He looks good.)</p><p>He shuffles over to the pre-heated oven and inhales deeply. “Feels nice,” he murmurs.</p><p>“It does. Just don’t burn yourself. What toppings do you want?”</p><p>“What have we got?”</p><p>Gavin decides on a supreme pizza with fresh veggies from the garden while Jack has sausage and pepperoni. They put the pizzas in the oven and after Jack’s closed it, he stands back up, only to find that Gavin is swaying back and forth, arms wrapped around himself, eyes slipped shut.</p><p>Jack doesn’t want to disturb him, but he doesn’t want to risk him falling asleep here, when he’s not in bed, lest he risk hypothermia again. “Gavin? Are you okay?” he whispers.</p><p>“Mmm, what? Oh, yeah,” Gavin’s eyes slip half-open, but his face looks oddly dopey as he shuffles closer to the oven. “ ’S just…nice, you know?”</p><p>“What is?”</p><p>“This,” Gavin says. “ ’S all warm, isn’t it?”</p><p>But he’s rubbing his arms, so clearly something’s amiss.</p><p>“Are you still cold?” Jack asks, because he can’t just assume. Then he realises that maybe he needs to provide a more welcoming environment for him. “Shit, let me grab the heater for you. Or maybe you should go back to bed. Or – ”</p><p>“No, no, no!” Gavin actually chuckles, like he wasn’t risking hypothermia twelve hours ago. “I just – warm.”</p><p>He hesitates for a long moment, then shuffles over to Jack and nudges at his arm with his head. Jack instantly wraps his arms around him, wanting nothing except for him to be warm and safe.</p><p>Gavin lets out a contented hum as he nestles his head into Jack’s chest, and that’s where they stay for the next twenty minutes, warmed by the oven and each other. A day of watching movies in Gavin’s room on Jack’s laptop has made the position completely familiar, like there’s a space on Jack’s chest made perfectly for Gavin’s head, and Jack’s heart catches.</p><p>After he’d come back from the second weather reading that morning, Gavin had asked him what he’d do the rest of the day. It’d taken Jack a while to come up with the idea of watching movies together; he hadn’t thought it’d be a good idea for Gavin to go outside but he also hadn’t wanted to leave him alone, especially since his tiny frame runs cold and blows over easily in the wind, though he’s made a game out of the last one, like a litmus test for wind speed before doing their observations.</p><p>But finding Gavin shivering in his room had been a harsh reminder of just how vulnerable he was out here – how vulnerable they <em>both </em>were, and Jack couldn’t help but think about Gavin’s words on his nothing-but-work mentality. He hadn’t escaped the daily grind of Austin just to do the same here, after all, and knew that with any free time he’d kick back and watch movies. Gavin was up for movies too, so that’s what they did.</p><p>The oven dings. They untangle themselves for dinner, and as they eat their pizzas, Gavin launches into a conversation about the plausibility of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. That had been the fourth movie they’d watched, which Jack had thought Gavin had slept through since his eyes were closed. Gavin laughs, saying that he just likes drifting off and pays better attention to the words when he doesn’t have to look at it. It takes Jack a while to puzzle that statement out, but once they finagle it, it does make sense; it’s easier to absorb words when you aren’t also absorbing images.</p><p>Jack doesn’t want to break the nice conversation they’ve been having. But something’s been nagging at him all day, and he needs to ask.</p><p>(Hadn’t been brave enough to ask earlier even though they’d spent the whole day together.)</p><p>“Gavin, can I ask you something?”</p><p>Gavin pauses halfway to another bite. Something unreadable comes over his face, but eventually he nods.</p><p>“When I found you this morning…how long had you been shivering?”</p><p>Gavin hesitates. There’s something upset in his expression and Jack’s tentative courage bowls over like a leaf in the wind.</p><p>“Please be honest with me,” Jack begs. Then a horrid thought comes to him. “How many other nights have you spent freezing in your room?”</p><p>He’s imagining Gavin shivering every night for the past month, alone and uncomfortable with approaching Jack because of how wrapped up in work he was. Gavin seems like the type to not approach someone, not even at his worst, and Jack’s suddenly furious with himself.</p><p>(He can escape Austin, but he can’t escape himself. How unwelcoming he comes off. How lost, adrift, disconnected he was, like all his co-workers said.)</p><p>“Nights. Some of them,” Gavin says evenly, sounding just as evasive as the words are.</p><p>“Gavin,” Jack clenches his fists. “Please. I don’t – I need you to be honest with me. I – we’re in this together. I don’t care how long you’ve been shivering – well, I do. I just. I want to make sure you’re okay.”</p><p>It’s been a long time since Jack’s been this bad with words.</p><p>“Most nights. Every night other than the one after the seals,” Gavin admits. “But Jack, I should have been honest with you from the first night. I um, I’ve noticed how worried you get about me…and I know it’s just us. If something goes wrong…”</p><p>“Yeah,” Jack swallows, uneasy at the reminder that the nearest hospital is a helicopter ride away through turbulent weather.</p><p>“I just didn’t want to burden you,” Gavin says. “That sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? That I’m…what, worried about what you think of me? You already know my laundry habits.”</p><p>“In that you have none, other than leaving it all for me to do instead,” Jack huffs fondly, unable to stop his smile.</p><p>Silence, now. Jack wants to comfort him, but the right words aren’t coming to him, so he fumbles out sincere but unorganised thoughts instead:</p><p>“Sometimes I worry about what you think about me too, because we didn’t go into this knowing each other. I’m quite – I’m awkward. I guess that’s part of why I came out here.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Gavin echoes, then nods and says more firmly, “Yeah, that’s part of why I came out here too. I figured out a week in or so that it was similar for you. Not many people with happy lives sign up for such shitty weather, you know?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Jack lets a relieved chuckle rush out. “Speaking of which, you’re welcome to come huddle with me whenever you’re cold. Or if you’re more comfortable with it, I could always come to you.”</p><p>“That’d be great. The last one. Uh, I just – I don’t ever want to presume.”</p><p>“I don’t want to presume either,” Jack says. “But I also know that it’s really tough out here, and it won’t be easier if we’re at some unsure stalemate with each other.”</p><p>Because with Jack’s social failings, he knows that, at least.</p><p>“Thanks Jack,” Gavin lets out a small smile. “It’s not that I’m afraid of intruding – well, I am. But it’s just. There was something nice about huddling in my bed, you know?”</p><p>“There was,” Jack agrees, giving Gavin a reassuring smile. “I could ask you, each night, before we go to bed? I – I’ll try and be consistent with it.”</p><p>He will. He vows to himself that he will. That he’ll be there for Gavin in whatever way he needs. That he’ll keep a better eye on Gavin in the future. That he’ll do better.</p><p>Gavin hesitates for a moment, then nods. “Thanks, Jack.”</p><p>There’s something small and vulnerable to the way he says it, so Jack reaches over and squeezes his shoulder. Gavin relaxes, smiling back, and they both go back to their pizzas.</p><hr/><p>Gavin accepts Jack’s offer of cuddling again that night, then the next night, and the next, and suddenly Jack can’t remember the last time he slept in his own bed.</p><p>It’s nice sleeping next to Gavin, his head against Jack’s chest, cuddled into his side, their legs tangled together, both their blankets pulled over their heads. One night, Gavin turns to his side so his back is pressed against Jack’s chest, and that’s how they start spooning. It feels so natural for Jack to wrap his arms around Gavin’s smaller chest, and it’s easier to fall asleep to the blustering winds with Gavin’s warm breaths on his arms, though he still wakes up alone every morning.</p><p>
  <em>You’re always a busy type, you know? I feel like you never…stop. Take a breather, or whatever.</em>
</p><p>Jack turns the words over in his head as they de-mould, as they cook, as they check up on the genny shed, as they tend the gardens. He’s not sure how to <em>take a breather</em> – they have their duties, after all – but he thinks of the seals, about how they’d found home in the seemingly ordinary, something inexplicably unique in the apparently barren.</p><p>So, he searches.</p><p>There are spots in ceiling, ones he mops over every other day, varying in size and shape like a paint splatter pattern. The uneven dirt trails are fun to kick up for the puff of dust and the feeling of being in a western, but it’s still oddly quiet with no footfalls except for his and Gavin’s. There are knots in the wooden bench in the workshop, gradients of oak that get darker with each ring closer to the centre. There are tea stain rings on the kitchen counter, too large to be from their thermoses. He can’t help but examine each scraggly white root at the bottom of freshly pulled carrots and the endless tangle of paths they take. He can’t help but imagine the various ways in which the cracks in the walls would splinter, what tree branches they’d form this time before they need to be refilled again.</p><p>It starts with one thing, then two, then more than Jack can count.</p><hr/><p>One morning the skies are silent, and the next they emerge from their 06:00 weather reading to one, then two, then thousands of caws of mutton birds passing overhead on their way north. They pepper the sky like clusters of stars, their movements synchronised to the catapults of the gale-force wind as though it were merely a soft breeze, propelled by pure instinct, no hesitation, no second-guessing.</p><p>Kind of like Gavin.</p><p>Because that’s how he is. He isn’t exactly a handyman, had admitted as much, but he’s creative, and curious, and a quick learner, and once he’s made a decision for how to do something he goes at it full speed without hesitation, and over the two months they’ve been here he’s gradually become more confident with repairs, with weather observations, with cooking, with gardening.</p><p>When they’re working together, he’ll usually see something that reminds him of some other thing that makes him think of some hypothetical question that makes him think of some other thing, and those conversations flow easily, so much like the wind. They give way to something playful, something teasing, an odd chemistry between them that Jack can’t really define, something impossibly plausible to it.</p><p>And so it happens that the words slip out of Jack’s mouth before he can stop himself, something soft and wondering to it, and Gavin’s surprised look gives way to what might be a blush, or maybe that’s just the bitter cold talking.</p><p>It’s not raining right now, a delightful respite from two weeks of hail and thunder, and Gavin suggests that they go watch the birds.</p><p>Jack hesitates.</p><p>(They need to mow the lawns or paint while it’s not raining –</p><p>They need to clear the pipes before plants sprout in the mud again –</p><p>They need to check the road and tracks for fallen trees or branches – )</p><p>But Jack remembers Gavin, freezing cold before dawn, how what had mattered was the two of them in the moment. He remembers another time, a month ago, of honking seals, of how content they looked as they hauled themselves ashore into the sunshine, taking care of themselves and enjoying the little things.</p><p>Of how Jack’s strongest memories of being here, two months in, aren’t the duties that he and Gavin have done; it’s the conversations he’s had with Gavin while doing so, their traded hypothetical questions, their talks about cooking and video games and movies. Of laughing over all the funky-shaped vegetables and fruit in the garden. Of all the bread and pizza and tacos they’ve made together, of the little things they both do to make each day different, from putting on music while de-moulding to Gavin running experiments on the hardy pig face plants on the trails up north.</p><p>And what a shame it would be to miss out on the once a year migration of the mutton birds from the Antarctic because of <em>duties</em> they have to do every day anyway.</p><p>Duties that can wait a few minutes, a few hours, a day.</p><p>Gavin’s shuffling his feet now, seemingly thinking that Jack isn’t going to answer, and Jack realises that he’s been silent for far, far too long.</p><p>“If you don’t want to – ” Gavin says.</p><p>“I want to,” Jack hastily interjects. “I just – had to think there, for a minute.”</p><p>“I know we have a lot of work to do,” Gavin worries at his lip. “But we don’t have to start all that right away.”</p><p>“That’s what I figured, yeah,” Jack nods, managing a small smile. “It just took me a while to realise, that’s all.”</p><p>Anxiety still crests over his chest, and he figures that’s coming through, but Gavin doesn’t seem to mind. He simply smiles back, something soft and gentle and reassuring to it, before heading over to a patch of grass nearby and plopping himself down on it, sprawling his arms and legs out like a grassy snow angel. He yelps, sitting up, turning to pout at his now water-soaked back.</p><p>“The grass is wet, you dumbass,” Jack chuckles, standing over him and notably <em>not </em>sitting down.</p><p>Gavin scrunches his face up at him. “You’re a dumbass,” he retorts, mangling the last word as he tries to pronounce it with his British accent, a mix closer to dumb<em>ass </em>than dumb<em>arse </em>the more times he says it.</p><p>“You’ll get it one day,” Jack teases.</p><p>Gavin rolls his eyes, and then suddenly Jack’s falling to the ground.</p><p>He yelps as he tumbles, meeting wet grass and Gavin laughing, his fist closed tight around Jack’s pant leg.</p><p>“Oh, god-damnit, Gavin,” Jack groans, because now <em>his </em>pants are soaked. “We’re going to have to wash these later.”</p><p>“And the wind will dry them in two seconds, as long as it doesn’t rain first, yeah, yeah,” Gavin dismisses, already reclined back in the grass, hands placed on his stomach.</p><p>“It’d be a lot easier if the wind wasn’t strong enough to nearly blow the sheets right out of my hands.”</p><p>That had been a close one; there’s no clothes dryer here, so laundry day becomes the high stakes event of hanging out washing on a clothesline outside, the stakes being one of the two sets of bedsheets Jack had brought, and it was only his strong grip that had saved them from flying away like a balloon in the sky.</p><p>“Maybe you shouldn’t try and hang the washing all by yourself, then,” Gavin says.</p><p>“I made an error, I’ll admit that,” Jack says, because he had. “But I don’t regret it. I know how much you enjoy looking after the lighthouse and I didn’t want to interrupt you.”</p><p>The Fresnel lens is delicate, after all, all sorts of glass and mirrors.</p><p>“We have two mobile plans for a reason, Jack,” Gavin chides, though he doesn’t look upset about it. “It’s so that we can call each other for hard tasks. Like trying to hang washing outside by yourself when the wind is 70 knots an hour. Which is 130 kilometres an hour. Wait, what is it in miles?”</p><p>“80.5 miles per hour,” Jack recites, because the wind’s been that fast often enough that he’s memorised the converted speed. “Besides, I didn’t want you to get bowled over by the wind again,” he adds, laying back on the grass. If all his clothes are going to get wet, he can at least be comfortable while doing it.</p><p>“I mean, I appreciate the concern, but I could have at least held the pegs for you or something,” Gavin huffs. They’d been through this when it had happened, and it seems Gavin is past it, for he turns back to face the sky. “Want to count how many birds there are?”</p><hr/><p>The birds are uncountable. Hundreds of thousands of them, it looks like, all flinging themselves through the blustery wind yet not a single collision between them.</p><p>Sunrise opens up before them in colourful skies, a dazzling mix of pink and orange and yellow interspersed with thin, soft clouds. Jack could have watched it all for hours, but even two months in he’s still not quite used to the early, long hours, and he quickly drifts off to mutton bird caws.</p><p>He wakes to Gavin’s hair tickling his chin, his lithe body warm against him. It’s the first time, Jack realises, that he’s there to watch Gavin wake up. When he does, he yawns, stretching like a cat before sighing back into his chest. He smiles up at him, humming in time with the birds passing overhead, a pleasant vibration against Jack’s chest.</p><p>Jack chuckles, humming along with him. He looks beautiful like this, and he suddenly wants to run a hand through his wild, sleep-tousled hair, but he’s not sure if that’s allowed, so he simply smiles down at him.</p><p>They’re both pleasantly groggy, but at 07:20 they reluctantly pull apart for the radio sked and breakfast.</p><p>Afterwards, Jack starts mowing while Gavin goes off to do the second weather observation, saying that he’d like to set up a couple of meteorological experiments. Jack’s interested in what he’ll set up, but Gavin refuses to tell him, because, “That’d ruin the surprise, Jack!” and Jack rolls his eyes but lets him get to it, knowing that whatever it is it’ll be interesting and insightful.</p><p>Jack’s halfway up to quarters two when Gavin comes back, and he says that the weather looks to be good for the rest of the day – good in the sense that the wind’s 80 knots an hour but no rain – so they run to open the windows and doors in every building and the lighthouse to air them out, then switch from mowing to painting the buildings and fences.</p><p>They have to cling to the railings and window sills so the wind won’t knock them over as they do so, and Gavin has to hold the paint can for him just so it won’t blow away, but Jack just restuffs his slowly growing hair under his beanie and keeps going, even as the wind blows it all back in his face anyway. With only one roller between them and triple the wind it takes five times as long, but it gives them more time to appreciate the cawing birds above them.</p><p>Gavin spends most of the time trying to imitate them, and his caws are way too accurate for Jack’s liking. Gavin laughs over Jack’s attempts, saying that his voice is way too deep for that, and Jack says that he’s always been better at lion roars, and that’s how they start making all sorts of animal noises, which leads to a guessing game of, ‘Which animal sound am I making?’, the game ending when Gavin makes what Jack swears is a turkey sound but Gavin insists is an orca.</p><p>They finish painting around all the houses, then head back home for lunch. Thankfully the weather has held up, and at this rate they should be able to finish up the rest of the buildings just in time to turn on the lighthouse.</p><p>As they eat leftover frozen apple pie that they’d made a few nights before, the caws of the mutton birds are accompanied by the wind picking up yet again - 86 knots, Gavin exclaims as they check at the station – but they agree to go back to painting anyway. At this point, it’s a procedure: prime, paint and repeat. The wind is so loud they can’t hear the seals today, but they burst into song in a game of, ‘Can you hear me sing over the wind’?</p><p>They re-paint the weather station, then Gavin grabs his camera before they head up to the lighthouse.</p><p>Sunset rolls around just minutes before they’re done repainting what they can of the lighthouse, and Jack is left to paint alone as Gavin runs in and turns on the light.</p><p>From the grass, Jack sees Gavin burst out onto the balcony, filming the sunset looking out across the Needle rocks like he’s done every night. It’s a cloudy sky tonight, but it’s still beautiful; the clouds gather into patchy, rippling layers that almost entirely cover the pink and blue sunset.</p><p>Gavin looks…beautiful, and focussed, and completely engrossed in his camera and the cotton candy sunset. He looks good, standing on the balcony of the lighthouse, and Jack suddenly has the thought that he’s the Juliet to Jack’s Romeo. Without the Shakespearian tragedy, of course.</p><p>He doesn’t do anything about it, of course. They’ve gotten comfortable with each other over the last two months, and the last thing Jack wants to do is break it.</p><hr/><p>The next day it’s sunny again, much to both of their surprise and delight. They go visit the seals between their weather observations, then come back and start mowing.</p><p>They make a game out of making wacky patterns in the grass. Gavin mows out a lot of veiny dicks, while Jack makes the much more PG picture of a face with shaggy hair and a beak for a nose.</p><p>Gavin squawks at him indignantly, laughing and retaliating by mowing a face that vaguely looks like Jack, with comically large glasses and a beard down to his toes <em>because you’re an animal, Jack, </em>like Gavin himself doesn’t have a scraggly beard connecting his chin and chest hair right now, which Jack adds to his own grass picture promptly. Currawong birds have started flying overheard, and Jack takes their cawing as a compliment, and they laugh before mowing other patterns instead.</p><p>They break by coming back home for lunch, during which Jack checks up on their preserves. Jack had researched beforehand on how to minimise food waste, and throughout their stay, they’ve turned leftover carrot tops into pesto, cabbage into sauerkraut and extra tomatoes into pasta sauce, with the rest of the waste becoming compost.</p><p>Gavin has taken some of the leftovers to do experiments with, and the results are scattered across the kitchen counters. He takes endless photos of them all, borrowing Jack’s notebook to write down the results even though he has a perfectly functioning laptop.</p><p>The sauerkraut is ready to go, so they do a taste test of that over home-made bread. This batch is…way too sour, but it’s decent when loaded with extra tomato sauce.</p><p>The rest of the day is spent mowing. The wind isn’t that high, so they’re able to take their time with it. Jack has found mowing to be more methodical and relaxing the more he does it, kind of like washing the dishes by hand. And while Gavin doesn’t quite feel the same way, he has said that there’s something calming to it, though he’ll never be an avid mower in his daily life.</p><p>At sunset, they turn on the light at the lighthouse, unveiling bold indigo skies bathing the swelling ocean purple. Jack marvels at the gorgeous sight; there’s no words to describe how…wonderful, it makes him feel. Like pure joy in a bottle.</p><p>And there is Gavin, leaning on the balcony, camera in hand with a big smile on his face, joyous and beautiful and <em>free </em>and Jack has the sudden impulse to ask him out.</p><p>To ask him to go on a walk with him, to explore the island like they’ve been meaning to do for a while now but have always been too busy to do. To walk around for things other than mowing and drain clearing. To lean back on the grass and watch the skies fly by in a cacophony of colours and clouds.</p><p>(Yesterday, those feelings had risen, but he hadn’t done anything about it. He doesn’t know why, but something feels different tonight. Maybe it’s because out here, it’s literally just them, and there’s only so far you can run from your thoughts.</p><p>Maybe it’s because he’s spent the entire day thinking over everything they’ve done together over the past two months. Weather observations. Running the lighthouse. De-moulding. Cooking. Laughing as they sling flour at each other in flour fights. Tool and structure repairs. Drain clearing. Gardening. Gavin’s multitude of experiments on every part of the island. Maintaining the genny shed. Endless hypotheticals, from ghosts to aliens to a million dollars for <em>more </em>millions but it’s ‘ghost money’. Checking the solar panels when they could. Weeding. Mowing. Sleeping together every night watching movies, Gavin warm and cuddly in his arms.</p><p>By now, Jack knows he’s got feelings for Gavin, but he also knows how he gets when he likes someone. He shies away, becomes apprehensive, stand-offish, turns to work to will it all away. Jack doesn’t want to risk making things awkward, but Gavin doesn’t deserve to have Jack pull away for seemingly no reason, either.</p><p>The thing is, Jack knows he’s got feelings for Gavin, and that the inevitable rejection would be easier for both of them to deal with if he tells him now rather than dancing around it for the next few months.)</p><p>So when Gavin comes down from the lighthouse, Jack has a question for him.</p><p>“Gavin…can I ask you something?”</p><p>“Sure, what is it?” Gavin sounds so light and happy that Jack nearly doesn’t ask, but he has to ask now before he loses his nerve.</p><p>“Do you…do you want to take a walk with me?”</p><p>“I mean, we walk all the time.”</p><p>“No, I mean – not for work. I um…I like you, Gavin. I like you a lot. Not just as friends,” Jack catches himself afterwards, because he can’t just assume that they’re <em>friends</em>.</p><p>Gavin’s eyes widen. “Wait, aren’t you married?”</p><p>Of all the things Gavin could have said, Jack hadn’t expected that.</p><p>“Wait, what? No, I’m not married,” Jack pulls off his left glove to show him his ring finger, absent of a ring. Then he realises. “Shit, wait, are you married? Or dating someone? Are you…are you even into guys? Not that – if you are, I’m just saying, you don’t have to like me just because we’re both into guys. If you swing that way, that is – ”</p><p>“I’m not dating anyone,” Gavin interrupts Jack’s rambling. “Haven’t dated anyone in a long time, remember? But yes, I am into guys. And I’m…I’m into you. But…” Gavin looks down, gaze pointedly on the grass at his feet. “The thing is, this will be over at some point, won’t it? Once we’re done here. I don’t want to string you along or anything. I can’t – it’s not like I can go off with you back to Austin.”</p><p>“I’m not asking for that,” Jack says gently. “It doesn’t have to be serious. I just like you a lot, and I’d like to hold hands with you and do cheesy romantic things while we’re here. Like all those summer romances. Not that I want us to be a movie!” he hastily corrects himself. “That’s not – I didn’t want to imply that this is some sort of fantasy fulfillment – ”</p><p>“No, I get it,” Gavin places his hand on Jack’s arm, and Jack sags. He’s still too self-conscious of what he’s said, but Gavin doesn’t seem offended. “I think…maybe we could have it be a ‘what happens on the island stays on the island’?”</p><p>Jack bites his lip. “I don’t want this to be a ‘hit it and quit it’ situation.” The words taste bitter on his tongue, too much like the one-night stands Jack’s never been good at. “It doesn’t have to be serious, but…I also don’t want this to mean nothing at all.”</p><p>“I didn’t mean it like that,” Gavin says, something assuring in his voice. “I meant it as more of a moment of nice in chaos, not a morning-after Vegas.”</p><p>His eyes are gentle and sure, like he wants to take care of Jack and make sure he’s okay. Like a lighthouse, standing tall and strong, navigating lost ships through the dark. A fleeting moment of bliss, for here and now.</p><p>And you know what? He’ll seize it, no matter how selfish it feels to do so.</p><p>(No matter how soon they’ll both have to return to their normal lives.)</p><p>“Okay,” he breathes out.</p><p>He slowly, hesitantly, steps closer to Gavin. Their fingertips brush, legs a breath from touching. The lighthouse frames Gavin’s face into a wide-eyed silhouette of beauty, and Jack’s eyes fall to Gavin’s slightly parted lips.</p><p>“May I kiss you?” Jack whispers.</p><p>Anxiety crests over him – he should have mentioned that if he’s uncomfortable he could say so – but Gavin doesn’t seem to notice, for he tilts his head up and leans closer.</p><p>“Yeah,” he breathes.</p><p>Jack captures his lips in his own.</p><p>Gavin’s lips quiver against Jack’s in a shaky breath, then a slender gloved hand is cupping Jack’s cheek, pleasantly chilled in the cool night, and the kiss deepens. He tastes like tea and tomatoes, a pleasantly bitter mix to his wind-chapped lips.</p><p>Their mouths move together, tentative yet heated, and Jack’s hands splay across Gavin’s lithe back. The expanse of it has become familiar with the many times they’ve cuddled in bed but this time, Gavin’s lips are dancing across his, causing a pleasant ball of heat to spread through his chest. He groans into Gavin’s mouth, hands clenching the back of his parka. Gavin groans with him, and the kiss becomes open-mouthed, Gavin suckling on his bottom lip in a way that leaves him weak at the knees.</p><p>When they finally pull apart, the indigo skies have faded to black, dotted by faint stars and the lighthouse beaming into gently rippling waves. Gavin’s gloved hand is warm against Jack’s chest, right over his pounding heart, and together they listen to the melodic waves, before walking home together, arms wrapped around each other.</p>
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<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It starts with watching sunrises and sunsets. One, then two, then countless more, until Jack can’t remember how long it’s been since they didn’t have to peel themselves away from the breath-taking sunrises to listen to the radio sked or do weather observations, before going right back to their cozy viewing places near the cliffs. How long it’s been since they didn’t stay out watching the ever-changing sunset, making out languidly on the lighthouse balcony as the sun slips away.</p><p>The days have gotten shorter as winter gets closer. They’ll barely get through extra repairs before they have to turn on the lighthouse at 5pm, and they’ll be watching the sunrise ten minutes into the radio skeds – outside when the weather’s clear, from the windows in the kitchen when it’s not. The grass doesn’t grow as fast, but the mould comes in faster, and at this point they’re wiping the walls every morning, drain clearing every second afternoon.</p><p>The door-knob in quarters three fell off the other day – Gavin had laughed over what an utter <em>knob</em> it was, while Jack had hunted down a replacement; an old tap handle in the scraps pile that had rusted off the shower some caretakers ago. Jack accidentally mows over a patch of grass too harshly, leaving a bald spot. He briefly panics, before reminding himself that the grass will grow back eventually, and he moves on from the mistake.</p><p>The weather is as temperamental as ever. They’ll be down in the ditches of drain clearing one minute as it pours rain, the next they’ll look up and there’s a dazzling rainbow bursting through the clouds. They’ll go into the workshop for tool maintenance and repairs to wind whipping under the door and they’ll emerge to rumbling thunder. They mop the walls until the heads fall off and the threads fray, sweep drains until their straw brooms bend and get split ends. On the better days, they’ll skip demoulding and drain clearing to paint or mow, or remove rust from every metal surface, to the tune of the currawong birds and the chaotically regular wind.</p><p>It’s not all work though. After they’d first kissed, they’d taken their first walk together that night after dinner, led by the beams of the lighthouse and their headlamps. The walks have become regular things. It’s not every night, lest they somehow become bored of the majestic, ever-changing landscape of the island, but it’s nice to be able to walk in silence, unwind from a day of hard work, holding hands as the waves crash around them, looking up to take in uninterrupted views of the shimmering stars.</p><p>The tea tree and pig face plants look completely different at night, but no less wonderous, and Jack marvels again at the flora they have the privilege of taking care of. They’d figured out all the shortcuts around the island long ago, but it’s a whole different story when it’s pitch-black, and they make their own fun out of childhood games of hide and seek and tag, Gavin cooing like a mutton bird to taunt him and giggling as Jack croons for him in the dark.</p><p>The communications towers and the helipad become sights for Gavin to cartwheel through. He wants to do <em>backflips</em> on the grass too, but Jack has to stop him because there’s no hospital nearby if Gavin lands on his head. Jack’s happy to help him to handstands though, and that ends up being a night full of laughter and tumbling onto the grass together.</p><p>The secret garden becomes a place of solace where sit across from each other, sharing stories from childhood. Jack learns that Gavin had been, in his words, ‘a bit of a nothing at school’, and that’s how Jack shares that he’d been a wallflower in school. He ends up sharing exactly how he’d become like that, from being too reserved to fit in with his peers to fading into the background as utterly average, and Gavin places his hand on his arm, admitting that he was the same way. They don’t talk about what they did after high school – Jack doesn’t think he could cope with revealing that right now – but it’s such a strong comfort to be able to relate to someone.</p><p>They make up ghost stories, too. Many of Gavin’s happen to involve this ‘ghost money’ that he insists is real despite Jack’s argument that by its very nature ghost money wouldn’t be real because it wouldn’t be corporeal in the first place. Neither of them are actually that knowledgeable on ghosts; Gavin doesn’t believe in them but doesn’t want to mess with them, and Jack is a ghost sceptic at best, but it’s fun to pull things out of their imagination and cobble them into stories that leave them giggling into the night.</p><p>It’s not just ghost stories, either. They play word games with each other, they play I Spy, they play high five games and thumb wars and snap without cards. They take turns changing the rules and it’s different every time they play, and Jack learns that Gavin will always try to bend the rules so he can cheat or sneak in a kiss or cuddle, which Jack is more than happy to indulge him in.</p><p>They’ll visit the seals every chance they get. Jack brings his notebook so he can sketch them as they play in the water, and Gavin brings his camera and a long-range lens to film them from a distance, without flash so he doesn’t hurt their eyes.</p><p>Jack draws a lot, actually. Even on the days when they separate, Jack takes the time to draw the lighthouse, the birds, the skies, the Needle rocks. It allows him to take in all the details. The Needles, for instance, are staggering rocks of earthly green and brown against the ceaseless spray of white sea foam crashing up and down their surfaces. He’d only brought lead pencils so he can’t add colours, but his shading isn’t too terrible, though his finger pads are now permanently grey from the graphite.</p><p>At first, the thought of not clearing the drains or demoulding right away causes familiar anxiety to crest up in him, but every time he remembers that things won’t fall apart just because he takes a minute to breathe, that if things break they have ways of fixing them – or can at least figure something out. That if the mould comes in harder than expected then they just have to apply double layers of the clove oil mixture. That if plants sprout up in the drainage pipes they can always tug them out.</p><p>What had begun as a quick sketch while demoulding on his own had quickly turned into something meditative and relaxing, a way to process the glorious and bedazzling world in front of him that he can’t put into words.</p><p>He loves the clouds the most. Sometimes they’ll rush by, sometimes they’ll linger. Sometimes they’re wispy, stretching farther than the eye can see like a glazed-over window. Sometimes they clump together into solid-like balls. Sometimes they sprawl like sparks from a welder. Sometimes they’ll cover the tentatively peeking sun, but it’s never for more than a few minutes before they pass to unveil the sun again. He draws the patterns they form, though he gets distracted half the time by just watching them instead.</p><p>Gavin, on the other hand, spends many days and nights filming the skies, the birds, the seals, the lighthouse, the walks down each trail. He even films Jack driving Dave one afternoon, laughing even when Jack runs Dave through a mud pile, splashing muddy water all over him, and when Gavin shows him the video, Jack’s amazed at how photogenic it all looks.</p><p>Despite spending so much time together, they still don’t talk that much. Before coming here, Jack had expected that he would need to be able to keep up conversation at all hours of the day, but they’d long reached a point where silences were comfortable. In many ways, it makes the times when they do talk more special.</p><p>They hold hands a lot, cuddle even more, sneak kisses on cheeks or nuzzle their heads into the other’s shoulder as they work. It took Jack a while to get used to all the physical affection, namely because Gavin’s the first person he’s met who actually <em>wants </em>all the affection Jack gives. He keeps thinking that Gavin will shy away at some point, say that it’s getting too much, but he never does. He seems to revel in it in the same way Jack does, appears to take the same kind of comfort in it, and soon enough Jack’s gotten used to being greeted in the morning with arms snaking around his waist and a minty kiss on his cheek to accompany his tea, to Gavin leaning his head on his shoulder as they listen to the radio sked. Of initiating the same touches in reply, tinged by the smell of grass and tea.</p><p>Fall slips into winter. It leaves Jack shivering in its wake even through his thickest clothes, his snow gloves, his beanie and woollen socks. He wraps his arms around himself in some attempt at keeping himself warm, even when he has to unravel himself moments later to do weather observations or clear drains or fix something. His breaths fog even when the sun is up, he jumps around to keep himself warm, and he lets endless thermoses of tea warm his body from the inside out.</p><p>For the most part, the veggies have come in nicely. They’d saved the seeds throughout the fall season, the way their books and training had taught them, and they plant the saved seeds at the turn of the season. The birds come and go, and the seals are a constant honk in the background as they tend to the lighthouse, clear drains, demould and check on the solar panels.</p><p>Lunch and dinner become Jack and Gavin cooking together, the sizzling of fresh veggies on the stove, the smell of freshly baked goods. Gavin has blossomed here, riveted by how it’s all bucket chemistry and small adjustments, just like he does with his cameras. Sometimes they’ll cook a couple of things at once so that they can have leftovers. On non-rainy nights they’ll bring the leftovers with them for dinner, usually pizza, and watch the embers of sunset slip into the night. They’ll have leftovers for lunch on the busy days or the gorgeous sunny hours that they want to soak up as much as possible, the ones where they don’t want to stay inside for even a minute.</p><p>Then one night, Gavin gets a cold.</p><p>It’s nothing too major – just sniffles and a fever from a recent cold front, but he’s out of commission for a few days, and with no doctor nearby it’s scary, running around making fresh pumpkin soup without knowing for sure whether he’ll be okay.</p><p>Gavin’s only contribution is to tell him through sniffles and a bright red nose that he can will away the sickness, and that <em>I’ll be fine, Jack, don’t forget to tend the garden and demould and turn on the light</em>, but Jack does the bare minimum those days before rushing back to Gavin, cuddling him close as they marathon movies together.</p><p>He only sort of regrets it when he gets sick too, and Gavin huffs, making him hot spaghetti bolognaise to go along with his tea before leaving him with some movies to go catch up on the demoulding Jack didn’t finish.</p><p>The morning Jack’s better, Gavin tries cereal with tea instead of yoghurt, because why not? Jack tells him that it probably wouldn’t go well, since tea is bitter, but Gavin dumps a whole thermos of it in his bowl anyway, before wrinkling his nose because he hadn’t expected it to be <em>that </em>bitter. It’s better once Jack adds some yoghurt, and Gavin agrees, but to him, what’s the point of having both tea and yoghurt when you could just have yoghurt?</p><p>Still, it’s a fun experience, and that’s how they end up trying creative ways of cooking with yoghurt and tea. It turns into complete chaos, and Jack doesn’t think he’s ever had so much fun mixing pumpkin and yoghurt before or using tea instead of oil when cooking wacky shaped snow peas from the garden.</p><p>The first month of winter is cold front after cold front, shower after shower, with plenty of hail, fog, thunder and lightning. They count the seconds between each lightning strike, bet each other on when the skies will next boom out thunder, stretch their arms out to see how far they can’t see in front of them on foggy day and how much the house will shake with each shift in the cold front. But other than that, their days become thick grey clouds, freshly baked pies and lasagna, and perfect excuses to cuddle up and watch movies over hot thermoses of tea or play card games from childhoods ago, Gavin doing everything he can to distract Jack with kisses so he doesn’t notice him cheating, but he’s giggling the whole time, so it never really works.</p><p>(And throughout it all, Jack is falling more and more in love with Gavin, even though he knows it won’t last.)</p><hr/><p>It’s the fourth of July when the clouds unveil the sun again.</p><p>Jack doesn’t realise the date at first. It’s only when the radio sked recites the date that he realises.</p><p>“It’s Independence Day,” he says, the moment the radio sked is over.</p><p>“Huh. So it is. Do you celebrate it much?”</p><p>“Yeah, every year,” Jack nods. “The annual fourth of July fireworks. I’d meet up with my family, have a barbeque, go see the fireworks downtown, or drive up to Round Rock if it’s too crowded. Watch a baseball game or two.”</p><p>“Round…Rock?” Gavin furrows his brow. “Is that just like a literal giant rock that’s round?”</p><p>“No, it’s a town just north of Austin,” Jack chuckles. “The actual Round Rock is located in Brushy Creek, just west of Round Rock the suburb.”</p><p>“Huh. So it’s like…Uluru, in Australia?”</p><p>“Not at all. Uluru is a massive sandstone rock in the middle of the desert; the Round Rock is a tiny little thing in the middle of a pond.”</p><p>Gavin laughs. “Not on the same playing field then.”</p><p>“Nope. Do they have anything like that, in England?”</p><p>“Not that I know of,” Gavin shrugs. “Though I haven’t much gone to the countryside. The Stonehenge is probably the closest.”</p><p>“That’s what I thought of when I saw the Three Sisters. Up in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney,” Jack explains at Gavin’s confused look.</p><p>“Oh, those ones! I thought you were going to say the Twelve Apostles or something.”</p><p>“On the Great Ocean Road, right? Oh yeah, I forgot about those. Though I guess they’d be the sea-version of the Stonehenge.”</p><p>“Mmhmm. Speaking of which, it’d be nice to have like, a barbeque by the sea or something, for Independence Day.”</p><p>“We don’t have a barbeque, though.”</p><p>“Sure, but we could still eat outside, or something.”</p><p>“Like a picnic?”</p><p>That’s how they clean out some metal buckets from the workshop and fill them up with Tupperware boxes of leftover strawberry pie, fruit parfait and sliced deli meats. On Gavin’s request, Jack brings the one bottle of whiskey they’d packed and the thinnest blanket from Gavin’s room to sit on.</p><p>They set up their picnic at their usual viewing spot by the cliffs, and as Jack pops open the whiskey, he asks Gavin whether he has any British holidays he’d like to celebrate.</p><p>“Just the Queen’s birthday, innit?” Gavin says. “Don’t remember when that is though. Normally I just Google it, or look for it on the news.”</p><p>“I do the same with Labor Day. I think it’ll be just after we finish here, though. It’s at the start of September, I think.”</p><p>“National holidays are something, isn’t it? There’s probably one for every day of the week. Like ice cream day. And kiss someone on the cheek day,” Gavin punctuates that with a kiss on Jack’s cheek, who blushes.</p><p>“Well then I have to kiss your cheek too, if you’re willing to accept it?” Jack says.</p><p>Gavin grins, sticking out his cheek, which is warm and soft under Jack’s lips as he pecks it.</p><p>They raise a toast to all the holidays they’ve inevitably forgotten while being here, taking turns sipping whiskey straight from the bottle, leaving a smoky, spicy aftertaste as they dig into their picnic under the beaming sun and clear blue skies.</p><p>Afterwards, they put the buckets aside to sit beside each other, Gavin laying his head on Jack’s shoulder. He’s sun-warm where they’re pressed together, and like every rare moment of sun they’ve had here, Jack’s heart feels at ease, an ignition of his soul that makes him feel like he can breathe for the first time.</p><p>Eventually they pull apart for the second weather reading, and the weather looks good for the rest of the day, so they spend it repainting everything and visiting the seals. It’s so perfectly glorious outside that neither of them go inside for more than five minutes the whole day, having lunch, then snacks, then dinner at their picnic by the cliffs as the blue and orange striped sunsets splay across their faces.</p><p>Afterwards, they dance, some conglomeration of a waltz where Gavin constantly steps on Jack’s feet and they laugh, hands tightly clasped, as they croon out of tune to Frank Sinatra as Jack twirls Gavin around, both of them whiskey-warm and beaming. It’s one of those magical nights, this little moment of bliss in a wild world that Jack hopes to remember forever.</p>
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<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>After a break, posting will now resume as normal. If you're here, thanks for reading. Final chapter will be released this Saturday (AEST).</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>They dance in the rain, too. And in the wind, using the blustering howls of it as music. They’d even danced during a thunderstorm, once, though that had terrified Jack to no end. By some miracle, neither of them had gotten a cold from that, but it becomes a thing where they’ll be demoulding together or doing other indoor work with music, and the moment a dancing song comes on they’ll drop everything to dance in each other’s arms. When they’re outdoors, the birds become the dancing songs instead, and there are so many times they’ll stop drain clearing or repairing things to watch the green rosellas peeking their heads around an antenna wire.</p><p>On one particularly memorable night, Gavin comes up with the idea of having a night in the back of the truck. It’s a windy, rain-free day, so Jack brings out dinner while Gavin drags the picnic blanket through the grass like they don’t have to clean all the dirt out of it later.</p><p>Jack huffs with fondness and exasperation and brings out the rest of the blankets, because if they’re going to spend the whole night out here it won’t do to freeze, and the metal back of the kei truck becomes the seating for the cinema on Jack’s laptop, silhouetted by low thick clouds in dusky grey, as they cuddle under the warm blankets and sip tea.</p><p>They wake up to caws of currawong birds and bird poop on Jack’s shoulder, which Gavin teases him endlessly for, but Jack just blows a raspberry into his cheek, and Gavin yelps before leaping away onto the grass. When Jack gets off from the back of the truck to go after him, Gavin hops onto his back to tickle him, tumbling them both into the grass. They frolic in a tickle fight, ending with Jack laying on top of Gavin, who grins before leaning up to kiss him as the sun peeks up behind them.</p><hr/><p>Then one night, Gavin bursts in while Jack’s making dinner, yelling excitedly about an aurora in the sky. Jack turns off the stove – don’t want to burn anything – before rushing out after him.</p><p>Jack gasps. The clouds from that afternoon had parted to reveal a breath-taking lightshow of vivid greens and purples, adorned with twinkling stars. The neon greens at the sea-line stretch upwards, like the sun does every morning, giving way to milky purples and indigoes, illuminated by the lighthouse, tall and strong.</p><p>The southern lights, Aurora Australis, and they have it all to themselves.</p><p>Jack’s heart seizes with joy as he lays on his back in the grass to watch the beautiful skies. There’s barely any wind, and no rain, and Jack hears rather than sees Gavin set up his camera on a tripod to film a time-lapse of the aurora before joining him in the grass.</p><p>They stargaze for a while, taking turns to point out constellations from the Southern Cross to Ursa Major, the way they’ve grown comfortable doing during their time here. Gavin’s quite knowledgeable about the stars, having a strong interest in astronomy. It meshes well with Jack’s endless interest in SpaceX and NASA, and they reminisce yet again about how fantastic Maatsuyker has been in giving them so many opportunities to watch the stars, uninterrupted by air pollution and buildings.</p><p>They talk about Austin and England for a bit, whether they’d be able to see such views of the northern lights from either place – or the sky at all, really – but after they both answer no, the conversation tapers out, and the stargazing winds down.</p><p>What’s left is the two of them, out here in the silence of the night.</p><p>The thing is, it’s nearly the end of their six-month stay. Jack’s been keeping track of the days, and after this they’ve only got a week left. A week until this magical time is over, until it’s lost to the seas forever. He’s –</p><p>(He’s <em>scared.</em>)</p><p>The thing is, Jack came out here to forget, to escape, to <em>leave</em>, but out here in the dark everything he left behind has shoved itself back into the fore-front, and he knows he can only run for so long.</p><p>And he shouldn’t ask like this, not when things have gone so well throughout their stay, but there’s something easier in the air tonight, in how the inky skies settle over them like a blanket that will keep them safe, no matter how turbulent the weather.</p><p>“It’s gonna be over soon,” Jack whispers. “Our stay here.”</p><p>Gavin looks over at him, biting his lip. “Yeah,” he whispers, something morose to it. “It will.”</p><p>“What are – you don’t have to answer, but…what are you…going to do, after this?”</p><p>“After we finish up here? Uh, probably go back to bed,” Gavin says, too lightly, too dismissively.</p><p>“Gavin,” Jack says, sternly. “I – you don’t have to answer, but. Please, I’m – I’m asking a serious question.”</p><p>He hates himself a little (a lot) for how much of a buzzkill he’s being right now, but there’s a roiling in Jack’s heart that’s even more unsettling in how Gavin’s not taking this seriously.</p><p>(Or maybe Gavin didn’t quite understand his question? He can’t read minds, after all, in the same way that no-one can, and Jack shouldn’t have been so stern – )</p><p>“Sorry,” Gavin says. “I didn’t mean to make light of it. But um, I’m not really…sure? I figured I’d just go back to England, do stuff.”</p><p>He doesn’t seem particularly happy about that, and Jack shouldn’t pry, but there’s something too familiar about it. It’s how Jack gets when people ask him about his own life, how it’s <em>satisfactory </em>but nothing more. How it always seems like there’s something missing, but he shouldn’t look gift horses in the mouth because he’s got a decent job that pays the bills.</p><p>“Would you be happy with that, though?” Jack whispers. “I’m not saying you have to answer, but…”</p><p>Gavin stares at him for a long moment, his features flickering through a multitude of emotions that Jack can’t figure out.</p><p>“Obviously I don’t know anything about your life, and you don’t need to tell me if you don’t want to, though if you do I’m happy to listen. Not that I’m happy about your misery, if you feel that way!” Jack hastily explains, as Gavin’s eyes widen. “It’s just…I think we might be in the same boat here. About not really wanting to go back to the mainland.”</p><p>“We got here by helicopter,” Gavin says, somewhat dazedly, before shaking himself. “I don’t want to go back,” he admits, voice too small. “At least – not yet.”</p><p>“We’ll have to go back eventually,” Jack hates to admit it, but it’s the truth. “We can’t stay out here forever.”</p><p>“Wouldn’t it be nice, though? To have this little pocket of time last forever?“</p><p>Jack’s thought about it, actually. There are many posts like this, working on remote islands, but as a permanent caretaker. Part of him would like nothing more than to do so. But…</p><p>“It would, but…reality catches up with you eventually. I imagine that this kind of life can be a good thing for someone long-term. It might be what they need. But at the end of the day….”</p><p>“We’ll have to come back into the light,” Gavin says. “Literally and figuratively. Can’t hide away forever.”</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>“So, what will you do, after this? What <em>were </em>you doing, before this?” Gavin says, but then his eyes widen. “Not that you have to answer, either, but. I just figured, since we’ve spent so much time together, it’s not the worst time in the world to ask…”</p><p>“It’s not,” Jack assures him, placing a hand on his arm, and Gavin sags. “I’ll go back to being an accountant, I guess.”</p><p>“You don’t sound happy about that.”</p><p>Jack shrugs. “It pays the bills.”</p><p>“So does being a cleaner, and you don’t see people being cheerful about that. Though I guess that’s what we’ve done for six months, with all that demoulding.”</p><p>“Most people don’t blast ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’ on repeat for four hours straight for everyone to hear while doing so.”</p><p>“That was one time!” Gavin laughs, then stops to gaze at him intently. “But seriously, if you weren’t worried about bills, what would you be doing instead?”</p><p>He’s asked softly, curiously, no judgement in it. But the things is…</p><p>Jack doesn’t know, really. Back in Austin, he’d been too busy just trying to make it through the day to think of anything else. The money justified the means, and he had to pay his college debts somehow.</p><p>“What would you be doing?” he says instead.</p><p>But Gavin shakes his head. “I asked first. And I already am, by the way.”</p><p>“Really?”</p><p>“Mmhmm. Just. Things go a bit. Intense.”</p><p>“Intense how?” Jack asks. Maybe Gavin <em>was </em>a visual artist, like a painter or drawer, but hadn’t wanted to bring any reminders of it, no matter how often other caretakers brought that stuff along themselves.</p><p>“Just, intense. Shouldn’t be looking a gift horse in the mouth, right? Got the job of my dreams, all that.”</p><p>“But if it’s not turning out the way you wanted it to, if there’s something off about the work-life balance, then you could always find something else.”</p><p>But Gavin shakes his head. “Thanks, but to be honest, filming things is the only thing I can ever see myself doing, you know? And I love it, I do, but I just…got a bit burnt out, you know? Running around all these film sets and stuff.”</p><p>Jack nods. “I went to film school, I get it.”</p><p>“Really? Huh, I wouldn’t have guessed. But you’ve probably never ended up on a film set with three-hundred people on it.”</p><p>“Three <em>hundred</em>?” Jack cries. “Jeez, what were you filming?”</p><p>“Movie, a big one. Sherlock Holmes 2, if you’ve seen it.”</p><p>Jack’s eyes widen. “No <em>way</em>. Of course, I’ve seen it – wait, we watched it last week! You didn’t think to tell me?” he splutters.</p><p>Gavin laughs. “That’d ruin the surprise, wouldn’t it? I did the slow-mo for it, when Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law are running through the forest,” he says it casually, like doing the cinematography for a <em>big-budget Hollywood film </em>starring A-list actors isn’t the pipe dream of thousands of broke filmmakers.</p><p>“That’s…amazing. That’s probably why your pictures and videos are so good.”</p><p>Because Gavin has shown him the stuff he’s captured on the island, hesitant about it, and Jack had praised him endlessly for it. But he hadn’t made the connection as to <em>why </em>he was so utterly good at it; Jack had just figured it’d been a hobby of his.</p><p>Jack doesn’t know what else to say, and he thinks that’s the end of the conversation – shit, he should have asked whether he’s not so burnt out anymore – when Gavin speaks up.</p><p>“You’re good at all sorts of things too. Heavy lifting, fixing things. All that hard, manual labour. I’m surprised that you’re an accountant.”</p><p>“Handyman isn’t exactly a lucrative career. Accounting is.”</p><p>“Are you happy in it, though?”</p><p>Jack ponders the question for a long time. He’s gotten good at that, here – thinking things over even longer than he usually does.</p><p>In his time in and out of grad school for accounting, he’s been asked that question a lot. Whether he’s happy with the endless office work, the tiny desks, the uncompromising clients. He’d trained himself for five years in how to answer that question, but six months under the soothing melody of pouring rain and crashing oceans have eroded his defences away, something that infinite coats of paint wouldn’t be able to cover.</p><p>That he <em>doesn’t </em>want to cover.</p><p>“No,” Jack barely manages to get out, because even epiphanies in the moment don’t make the words easier to say. “No, I’m not.”</p><p>“What would you want to do instead, if money didn’t matter?”</p><p>Jack hesitates. “You’ll laugh.”</p><p>At how ridiculous he is for going <em>back </em>to something that everyone praised him for leaving behind, how happy they were that he was finally reaching for something better –</p><p>Gavin turns to him and gives him an insistent, <em>do you seriously think I’m that bad? </em>look. ”I won’t laugh, I promise.”</p><p>But if there’s one person who might understand, it’s someone who’s also in the industry. Is so deeply engrossed in it that it’s why he came out here in the first place.</p><p>So Jack swallows and admits, “I wanted to make movies.”</p><p>Gavin raises his eyebrows, then nods. “Oh, that makes sense. I thought you were going to say handyman or something. But you did say you went to film school, after all. Why did you stop, then? I mean, I know what the outcome of stopping was – accountant – but why did you stop in the first place?”</p><p>“You mean why did I never start?” Jack says. He sighs. “I couldn’t break into the industry. I didn’t know some uncle’s friend or whatever.”</p><p>“How’d you get this position on Maatsuyker, then?”</p><p>“A lot of grunt work and persistence.”</p><p>“So do that, but on a film set,” Gavin says it with pure conviction, like it really is that easy, and for a moment, Jack believes it. “You could be a camera-man, or lug equipment or something. Be a sound guy, maybe. I don’t know what the film scene is like in Austin, but surely there’s some production company who’s cheering about filming in a rural desert.”</p><p>“Excuse you, Austin is not a desert, it’s a <em>very </em>urbanised city. The traffic there is worse than in Los Angeles.”</p><p>“I’ll believe that once it pops up on the news in England,” Gavin smiles. “Even if it’s just on weekends for shitty short films, at least it’s something; something for yourself.”</p><p>“I don’t know,” Jack doesn’t want to ruin Gavin’s hope in him, but he needs to be realistic. “It just feels like it would never work out. Just another failed pipe dream.”</p><p>“Sure, but in some ways, this was a pipe dream too, wasn’t it? Not many people get the chance to literally leave it all behind like we have.”</p><p>It’s true.</p><p>Despite the harsh, unappealing weather, the advert for being a keeper at Maatsuyker had gotten thousands of shares on Facebook, with applications open to anyone in the world. Hundreds had applied, shortlisted to ten souls adrift in the dark. Jack had known exactly how many positions would be available – two – but even then he’d still applied to be a caretaker on Maatsuyker, because the apprehension underlying the process was overridden by the regret he’d feel by not even taking the chance.</p><p>
  <em>Oh.</em>
</p><p>Then it hits him, suddenly, about how magical this experience has been. Caretaking the island, the lighthouse, taking weather observations; the houses and gardens that have become <em>home. </em></p><p>Suddenly he’s hit with doubts. Did he really make the most of his time here? He sketched and journaled but he hadn’t done much more. Past caretakers had built sculptures out of the scraps here, but Jack didn’t have the innovative know-how to make something from nothing and was worried he’d use up scraps essential to repairs on the island. Jack had brought a camera, but he hadn’t taken many pictures, not wanting to risk wasting power charging it that could be used for his laptop because he wasn’t sure whether the solar panels would have absorbed enough power. He didn’t even bring any books – not that he read much, but that’s something most keepers brought with them to pass the time.</p><p>And now he’s at the end. About to head back onshore.</p><p>Back to monotony, mundanity, a life he’s grown beyond. He knows himself well enough to know that once he gets back, he’ll keep looking backward, to the most incredible, rewarding adventure of his life. A heart-wrenching longing for “that winter” yet again.</p><p>“I wish I could do it all over again,” Jack says. “I wish I could take some of this with me.” He gestures to the sprawling grass, the endless sky, the rippling ocean around them.</p><p>“Why can’t you?” Gavin asks.</p><p>“What do you mean?”</p><p>“Surely your accounting office has windows, right? That look out into a park or something?”</p><p>“I know a few parks nearby, yeah,” Jack says carefully, not knowing where Gavin’s going with this.</p><p>“Go there, then. During your breaks. That’s something, right?”</p><p>Jack’s first instinct is to deny it. To say that this little something would just make him sadder because it’d be another reminder of the magical time he’s about to leave behind.</p><p>But those little somethings – from the birds to the stout carrots to the tiny strawberries to the endless array of sunsets – those are the joys that gave him room to breathe. Those little moments of bliss in the chaotic world of Maatsuyker.</p><p>He’s never thought to look for them back in Austin, even though he’s lived there his entire life. Maybe there’s all sorts of magic there that he doesn’t know about.</p><p>And what a shame it would be to miss out on them because of <em>duties </em>he’ll have to do every weekday anyway.</p><p>Duties that can wait a few moments, a few minutes.</p><p>“It is, you’re right,” Jack says. “But you’ve got to give yourself room to breathe too. I know you said you love your job but burn-out is a big problem in the film industry. You need to do stuff for yourself too – just for yourself.”</p><p>“Like what, make a YouTube channel or something?” Gavin sounds blasé about it, but it’s the instinctiveness of the response, so much like the mutton birds flinging themselves in the wind, that catches Jack’s attention.</p><p>“Sure, if that’s what doing something for yourself means,” Jack says. When Gavin blinks at him in shock, Jack adds, “You’re good at experimenting with things, you’ll figure it out.”</p><p>Gavin hesitates. “You mean all those little tests I set up around the island? I don’t think those are YouTube worthy.”</p><p>Jack shrugs. “You never know until you try. I’ve seen your work: your photos, your videos, your repairs, your experiments. You’re capable of so much more than you think you are.”</p><p>“Only because you gave me the time and room to do all those things,” Gavin says. “I know I take a long time to do things, that I’m not that great at repairs – I’m not all strong heavy lifter like you, you know? But you showed me the ropes, never cared about how long I took to figure things out, or how experimental or ridiculous I got with my solutions.”</p><p>“Being able to see things in different ways is important,” Jack says. “Otherwise it’s hard to really see how valuable something is. It’s too easy to dismiss things too quickly, to not give things a second look.”</p><p>Whether that be scraps that could be used for repairs or the patterns formed by the clouds in the sky.</p><p>“Maybe you just need to give yourself the room to do all those things, to be experimental and try new things,” Jack adds. “For yourself, not for anyone else or a job.”</p><p>Gavin bites his lip. “I don’t want to overestimate myself,” he admits. “But I also don’t want to go backwards, you know? All this – the island, caretaking, everything – has been lovely, and I don’t want to go back to how I used to be.”</p><p>“So don’t,” Jack says. “Maybe cook for yourself once a week – you said that you always used to get take-out. Or maybe be a bushcare volunteer on weekends. It doesn’t have to be those things, but it’s the little things that make all the difference. I think that’s one thing we can both take from being here.”</p><p>Gavin lips upturn in a small, soft smile. “It is.” After a moment’s pause, he adds, “I guess setting up a YouTube channel wouldn’t be a bad idea. I have lots of photos and videos from here, and there’s a lot of things I could test out back at home. No harm from it, at least.”</p><p>Jack smiles back. “Sounds good.”</p><hr/><p>And that’s it.</p><p>The rest of the week flies by in last de-mouldings, last drain clearings, last mowing and brush cutting, last re-painting, last repairs, last weeding, last check-ups in the genny shed, last rubbish run and packing all of their stuff. It’s odd, putting everything back into the plastic fish bins, now substantially lighter without six months worth of food. They turn on the lighthouse for the last time, then make fresh pizza that night for dinner, leaving the rest of the leftover flour, pasta, yoghurt sachets and tea for the next keepers.</p><p>It’s raining that night, but after dinner they go down to the lighthouse with their bottle of whiskey and sit on the balcony anyway, legs hanging over the edge, faces drenched in cold rain as they stargaze for the final time between long, languid, wet kisses.</p><p>In the morning, Jack wakes up to Gavin snoring in his arms, head nestled in Jack’s chest. His warmth is nice; he wants to stay in bed with him until the helicopter comes by, but there’s still their last weather observation to do, so he gently kisses Gavin’s forehead before untangling himself from him to go start the kettle.</p><p>It’s only now, standing in the comparatively barren kitchen, that it hits him that this is really the end. That he and Gavin are actually going to leave. His chest tightens.</p><p>There are a lot of memories here. Dozens of days cooking together, hundreds of thermoses of tea, hundreds of meals shared at the dining table. The rainy days where they’d stay in as much as possible, the non-rainy days where they’d rush through it just to go outside and soak in the wind or sun, whichever the island had felt like unveiling. Kisses and card games on the sofa. Too many movies to count.</p><p>Outside, the green rosellas and currawongs have come to say their goodbyes, sweeping over Jack’s head as the fur seals howl in the distance. It’s mostly dark outside, the days having increased in length again, but in the darkness he’s able to spot the myriad of thick clouds in the sky. Most are shaped like wolves, with a patch that looks like Austin if he turns his head and squints enough.</p><p>Time to face the music.</p><p>Arms wrap around his waist from behind right as he starts the weather observations, and he leans his cheek in for Gavin’s kiss as he pulls back from checking visibility with the binoculars.</p><p>They haven’t talked much these past few days, but Jack knows that the words they’d shared under the southern lights have been weighing heavily on both of their minds. More than anything, Jack doesn’t want to spend his life looking back, but he knows that Gavin’s right; that the only way to move forward is to take risks, to pursue that unreachable pipe dream of working on film sets.</p><p>He’s scared.</p><p>“Hey, Gav?” Jack says, wrapping his arms around Gavin’s. “Thank you. For everything.”</p><p>He wants to be more open about it, but he’s not sure Gavin would appreciate it; they’d both agreed that they weren’t going to keep in touch, and Jack has a tendency to get sentimental and sappy to the point where people feel obligated to stay with him even when they don’t want to.</p><p>From the warm, lingering kiss Gavin leaves on his cheek, he seems to understand his sentiments anyway.</p><p>“Same to you,” Gavin whispers, burrowing his head in Jack’s shoulder. “I – I wish I could say that I’d run off with you to Austin, or that I was willing to have you pop over to England, like people do in the movies, but I can’t.”</p><p>“And you’re not obliged to,” Jack reminds him. “It doesn’t have to be serious, remember?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Gavin sighs. “Doesn’t stop people from being disappointed, though.”</p><p>Jack’s heart twists because he’s right. “Sure, but I went into it knowing it’d come to an end once we were done here.”</p><p>He hesitates. There’s a question he’s burning to say but he doesn’t want to ruin this moment of calm in the slow chaos.</p><p>Gavin gently lifts his head, seeming to sense that something is off, and says, “What is it?”</p><p>Jack shakes his head, giving Gavin what he hopes is a careful smile but ends up being more like a grimace. “I want to ask you something, but I don’t want to impose on you.”</p><p>“You’re not,” Gavin says. “I promise I can take it. Well, actually, I can’t be sure of that. But I promise I’ll do my best to answer.”</p><p>“Okay,” Jack says eventually. “Do you regret it? Us?”</p><p>“No,” Gavin answers instantly, with such confidence that Jack can’t help but believe him wholeheartedly. “I’m not typically the type to get into romantic stuff, but…this was nice.”</p><p>“It was,” Jack says. He turns in Gavin’s arms, whose lips are a breath’s away from Jack’s. “For the record, I don’t regret it either. Any of it. I’d do it all again, too.”</p><p>Gavin beams at him. “Want to make out until the helicopter gets here?”</p><p>Jack cups Gavin’s cheeks and pulls him in for a passionate kiss.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Chapter 7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thank you so much for the support last chapter and throughout the rest of the story. Hope you enjoy the final chapter.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>And that had been it. A helicopter ride and a lingering hug later, they had parted ways. Their mobile plans from the island had lapsed, but even if Jack had been able to remember Gavin’s number, he wouldn’t have reached out. They had their own lives to get back to, and maybe this would just be their little pocket of bliss, a pause in the hallway of time.</p><p>It’s disconcerting, being back in civilisation. Walking feels too smooth on the tarmac streets. There are too many people even in the quiet cafes. Seeing food pre-prepared behind counters feels odd after six months of preparing every meal from scratch. Ordering food – <em>talking </em>– takes a conscious effort. He feels like he’s outside his own body, more than he ever was before this post. Like the only rugged weed in a garden full of roses.</p><p>He nearly misses his flight back to Austin because he spotted a Kit Kat chocolate bar in the convenience store at the airport and stopped to count the number of rows in it. Back in Austin, he gets Homeslice, but the pizzas he used to love taste artificial on his tongue after six months of freshly baked ones.</p><p>In HEB, he lingers too long over how utterly uniform the carrots are, how they don’t have the tops that are twice as long as the carrot itself that he’s grown to love. How the strawberries seem too big now, their flavour too dilute. How just passing by the spice section reminds him of clove oil and endless days of demoulding, but now there’s grating pop music playing over the speakers, a song Jack swears he’d been able to tolerate six months ago, rather than the tunes he and Gavin had clumsily danced to. The busyness around him, parents juggling screaming children, others on their phones as they load up their trolleys.</p><p>Outside – the trees. He hadn’t noticed the trees before coming in, but he notices them now. How the branches splinter into clear blue skies. He still loves the bright blue, but he already misses the clouds, the rolling thunder, of stepping outside and never really knowing what’ll be out there next. The air, musky with the smell of exhaust from car pipes, not clean like grass and crisp veggies. Everyone rushes to their cars parked right outside the door but Jack strolls, unhurried, to the back of the parking lot, where his car is baking under the much-missed sun.</p><p>He joins the traffic. He doesn’t realise he hasn’t put on the radio like he usually does until he’s already home, having driven through the evening gridlock completely lost in his own thoughts. There’s a bird outside his window that lands on an antenna wire, head turning back and forth to look for its companions. A racoon wanders by. A cat trots across the street past the road signs Jack had nearly forgotten.</p><p>The nearest stretch of grass is merely a backyard long, the view of the sky interrupted by tall buildings, and ‘nature’ is in the form of carefully carved gardens rather than natural and untamed shrubbery. Still, Jack goes over to them during his breaks at his accounting job, and it’s a small comfort to have a taste of nature, of what they’d had at Maatsuyker.</p><p>He switches to greengrocers and butchers for groceries, though they’re only slightly better than HEB. He starts a vegetable garden in his backyard, no matter how unviable the soil seems, and buys endless kilos of flour instead of pre-baked loaves of bread.</p><p>He forgets to buy oil because he’s gotten so used to cooking with tea instead. He goes to put vegetable scraps in the compost bin only to find that there isn’t one, and he’s halfway through cleaning out an old bin from the laundry when he remembers that he can just pop down to Ace Hardware to get one, though he doesn’t, out of sentimentality.</p><p>He finds himself halfway through washing the dishes by hand before he remembers he has a dishwasher, but he can’t bring himself to use it, having gotten used to the soothing motions of hand-washing and the water between his fingers.</p><p>The bed feels empty now without Gavin’s familiar weight cuddled into him. Even with endless thermoses of tea, movies aren’t the same without Gavin questioning the plausibility of every little thing or him dozing on his chest.</p><p>When he wakes up the next morning, he can’t hear the currawong birds anymore, or the seals howling, or feel the walls of the house rumbling under the claps of thunder. Still, he listens, and there’s the faintest sound of what he later googles is a grackle bird.</p><p>It gives him hope.</p><p>He listens for more of these sounds as the days go by – at home, on the street, at work. He learns to recognise the grackles, the cats, the dogs, the whizzing of cars down the street as their drivers rush to work. These days, Jack is in no such rush, leaving earlier and earlier to watch the sunrise further and further out of the city. Spends a lot of time at Lake Walter E. Long, the waters too calm for his liking, but it’s still the closest body of water that’s anything like the roiling waves that’d been outside his and Gavin’s door. Sometimes he’ll bring his notebooks, spends hours drawing the sights, or pouring over Gavin’s sketches of weeds and experiment results that he’d left in Jack’s notebooks that Jack had forgotten to give to him before they parted.</p><p>He spends a lot of time thinking about Maatsuyker. Even more time thinking about Gavin. About the magical winter they’d spent together. About moving forward.</p><p>About going for jobs on film sets, even though he knows it’s nothing but a pipe dream.</p><p>He goes for film set jobs anyway. Emails his old professors from film school, because the worst that can happen is that they don’t respond, but to his surprise, one of them puts him in touch with someone looking for a grip during an overnight shoot. Odd, long hours have become familiar to Jack, and he’s the only one fully awake amongst a sea of yawning crew members. He takes the opportunity to talk to the director and the producer, who put him in touch with some other people looking for grips. Working on set with those people lead to more jobs as a grip, some as a boom operator, and so on.</p><p>Then on one set, he gets to work with a sound recordist, and after a few more indie film sets as either a grip or a sound recordist, he finds out about RoosterTeeth, an online media production company in Austin.</p><p>Their gaming division, Achievement Hunter, is looking for a sound guy to help them record YouTube videos. Jack figures that with a year of experience as a sound recordist and his lifelong love of video games that he’d be a good fit. His interview goes well and a week later he goes up to the RoosterTeeth offices to meet everyone in Achievement Hunter.</p><hr/><p>He’s just walked in the front doors when he hears a caw. A very familiar caw. But it’s not a mutton bird, or any other kind of bird, but as he turns his head towards the sound he thinks <em>there’s no way, it can’t be, he’s back in England – </em></p><p>And out emerges Gavin, locked in a playful head noogie by a dark-haired guy with tattoos.</p><p>Jack’s heart stops. He knocks on the front door, hoping to get their attention.</p><p>Gavin and the other man look up.</p><p>“…Jack?” Gavin asks. He wriggles free of the tattooed guy’s grip to meet Jack’s eyes, but stays where he is, stock-still, not approaching him.</p><p>“Hey, Gavin,” Jack says, barely breathing. He meets his eyes, and they’re as beautiful as they were a year ago. He wants to step forward but he’s frozen in place, filled with fear. “I – what are you doing here? I thought you were in England?”</p><p>“Well, yeah I was, but then I made that YouTube channel, then Geoff here contacted me, and then I came here.”</p><p>“<em>This </em>guy is the inspiration for your channel?” the tattooed guy – Geoff – said.</p><p>“Shut it, Geoffrey,” Gavin says, not taking his eyes off of Jack, and Jack’s left breathless.</p><p>“Well, he’s going to be our new sound guy,” Geoff says, and now that Jack listens closer he remembers hearing his voice from another room during his interview.</p><p>Gavin’s eyes widen. “No way, seriously?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Jack nods.</p><p>“How’d you find out about this place?”</p><p>“Someone I worked with on a film set mentioned a local production company in Austin called RoosterTeeth, said that they were hiring.”</p><p>“Wow,” Gavin steps towards him, eyes wide and seemingly glazed over. He blinks once, then twice, then many more times. He stretches out his arms, hands hovering over Jack’s chest. “Are you real, or just a bit real?”</p><p>“Just a <em>bit </em>real, how would that work?” Jack startles out a laugh. He’s missed the way Gavin talks. “Would I be a ghost? You know I don’t believe in such things at all.”</p><p>“Doesn’t mean you need to be so casual about it,” Gavin says. “Still wouldn’t take a million to get ten million dollars in ghost money then.”</p><p>“It’s <em>ghost money, </em>it wouldn’t exist!” Jack laughs. “You forgot to mention the part where I’d have to pay ten dollars every time I forgot something.”</p><p>“But it’s ten – no, <em>eleven </em>million dollars!” Gavin grins. “Imagine how many Homeslice pizzas you could get with that.”</p><p>“I haven’t been able to eat Homeslice since I came back.”</p><p>“Seriously?”</p><p>“Yeah, six months of freshly cooked pizzas ruined me.”</p><p>Gavin laughs. “Funny, I had a similar thing with Pizza Hut.”</p><p>“Pizza Hut’s not that great.”</p><p>“Yeah, but I enjoyed it for its trashiness. Can’t even enjoy it for that anymore.”</p><p>“Fair enough. Besides, I wouldn’t take the money because even though I have a good memory, I don’t want to spend my life trying not to forget stuff. It’s too much to deal with.”</p><p>Gavin opens his mouth, but then closes it again. There’s an apprehension to it, exactly how he’d been when they’d first started doing repairs together on the island. Jack hadn’t noticed it at the time, but he’s had a year to think over Gavin’s words to him about how he’d given him the time to learn the ropes of repairs, had gone over all of Gavin’s expressions over and over again, and now it all comes back to him, as instinctively as the mutton birds in the wind.</p><p>It’s like he wants to ask Jack something but is terrified of asking. It seems like he’s waiting for Jack to say something first, and it hits him that it’s also like the first time they stood in the kitchen, Gavin’s boot scuffing against the floorboards as Jack tried to figure what the hell to say to the stranger across from him that he’d have to live and work with for the next six months.</p><p>“I just – where do we stand?” Jack finally fumbles out. There’s a million questions he wants to ask him, all related to what he’s been doing since they left Maatsuyker, but, “I don’t want to assume that we can just pick up where we left off…”</p><p>“Do you want to, though?” Gavin asks, small and tentative. He takes a shaky breath. “I just – I. I don’t know what to say.”</p><p>“I didn’t think I’d ever see you again,” Jack says. He knows he’s giving him a look full of longing, but he’s missed him so much that he doesn’t much care about embarrassing himself.</p><p>“Neither did I,” Gavin is shaking in front of him, like he wants to turn around and run off, and Jack falters.</p><p>He’s hit by just how large of a gulf it feels like there is between them. How maybe a year has been too long. How maybe Gavin has found someone to be with. They hadn’t officially been together, but some part of it still <em>hurts, </em>too much like sentimentality and attachment, of six months in only each other’s company.</p><p>“You’re not obliged to stick with me or welcome the ‘new guy’ just because we knew each other from before,” Jack says, because he needs that to be clear. No matter what, he won’t jeopardise Gavin’s position here. “We can always start over, like Maatsuyker never happened.”</p><p>“Is that what you want, though?” Gavin whispers, stepping closer, their arms and legs a breath’s away from touching.</p><p>Jack hesitates.</p><p>“I need you to be honest with me,” Gavin pleads. “Working here – I know it looks easy, but it’s not. It won’t be easier if we’re at some unsure stalemate with each other.”</p><p>Jack’s breath catches.</p><p>His instinct is to deflect, to say something about how it’s up to Gavin, without specifying what he himself is hoping for. He has the feeling that Gavin would want to start over because he said that he doesn’t normally do romantic things. Maybe their time on Maatsuyker was just a one-off, something that could be easily boxed up in a plastic fish bin because they wouldn’t have to see each other again afterwards.</p><p>But Gavin’s right. Not being honest with each other – leaving Gavin <em>unsure </em>of what Jack really wants – isn’t going to help, either.</p><p>“I want to pick things up from where we left off,” Jack says, but his voice shakes, because making the decision to be forward doesn’t make the words easier to say. “If you’re not with anyone…though if you are, don’t break up with them on my account!” he hastens to say.</p><p>“I’m not,” Gavin interjects, placing a hand on his arm, warm against his skin. He smiles softly at him. “If it helps, I’m not.”</p><p>“It does,” Jack nods, and now the words come easier. “I really liked what we had on Maatsuyker. I know things would be different here, with civilisation and everything, but I want to try, with you. If you don’t, that’s okay – I know you don’t do romantic things very much. But I’d like to know where you stand on this. It’s about both of us.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Gavin nods. He bites his lip, not saying anything for a minute. There’s something contemplative about it, like how he got when they first approached the subject of romantic stuff on Maatsuyker. “It’s not that I don’t want to,” he says eventually. “I just don’t want to be impulsive about it, jump into things too soon. ’Cos things are different here.”</p><p>“Of course,” Jack nods. His heart is singing at how Gavin wants to continue this at all. “Everything’s different, with civilisation. We can go really slowly, if you want, maybe work together first for a bit, hang out after work, and see where things go from there?”</p><p>Gavin bites his lip. “I don’t want to be stringing you along or anything.”</p><p>“You won’t be,” Jack shakes his head. “I know what I want, but I’m also not expecting anything from you. I’d love to be your friend one day, if you were open to it.”</p><p>“Of course you’re my friend,” Gavin breathes out, huffing out a fond smile, giving him the same <em>it should be obvious </em>look that he did when they’d talked about Brecon Beacons in Wales. “It sounds good. I don’t want it to be serious – I don’t think I’m ready for that, yet. But I also don’t want this to mean nothing at all.”</p><p>“What are you up for, then, in terms of physical affection?” Jack asks. It’d been such an important part of their dynamic, so he wants to clear it up now.</p><p>“Hugs and holding hands,” Gavin answers instantly.</p><p>Jack’s heart sings, and he laughs, giddy, opening his arms. Gavin laughs, too, throwing his arms around Jack’s neck, and as Jack hugs Gavin tight, he’s hit by his familiar smell, vaguely of grass and a lot of tea, and it feels like coming home.</p><p>“Do you want to go on a friend-date with me?” Jack asks him after they pull apart.</p><p>“Where to?” Gavin asks, taking his hand and leading him into the Achievement Hunter office. “Neither of us like restaurant food anymore, and I don’t have a kei truck for us to sit in the back of for movies.”</p><p>Jack huffs fondly, squeezing his hand and falling into an easy step beside him. “There’s some drive-in outdoor cinemas downtown, or we could go to the Alamo Drafthouse cinema if it rains.”</p><p>Gavin beams at him. “Deal. As long as we cook popcorn together for it first.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>And that's it =). Next up will be a lifestyle app AU, loosely based on the book 'The Right Girl' by Ellie O'Niell, although you will not need to have read the book to understand the fic.</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Feel free to chat with me on tumblr (username: booshlagoosh).</p></blockquote></div></div>
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